Comparing the Effectiveness of Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Meaning and Purpose (MaP) Therapy in prompting Post-Traumatic Growth and Psycho-Social Adjustment in Cancer Patients

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and meaning and purpose therapy in promoting post-traumatic growth and psychosocial adjustment in breast cancer patients. The current research is a semi-experimental type with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population of this research included all breast cancer patients in the Bukan Cancer Patients' Association in 2019, 45 of whom were purposive and were randomly assigned to three groups of cognitive therapy based on mindfulness, therapy based on meaning and purpose, and the control group. In this research, the 46-question Adjustment to Illness Scale–Self-Report (PAIS-SR)-Derogatis (1986) and the post-traumatic growth questionnaire by. Tedeschi & Calhoun (1996) were used. The experimental groups underwent treatment based on meaning and purpose and cognitive therapy based on group mindfulness for 8 weeks and one 60-minute session each week. To analyze the data, the statistical method of multivariate covariance analysis was used. The findings showed that there is a significant difference between the mean of the post-test in the two groups of the test and the test in the variable of psycho-social adaptation and post-traumatic growth (P ≥ 0.01), as evidence of the pre-test effect. In other words, cognitive therapy based on mindfulness was more effective than treatment based on meaning and goal in the variable of psychosocial adjustment, and therapy based on meaning and goal was more effective in the variable of post-traumatic growth than cognitive therapy based on mindfulness.