The Effectiveness of Cognitive-Existential Group Therapy on hopelessness in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, autoimmune, inflammatory nervous system disease. It leads to the loss of myelin in the white matter of brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. As a chronic disease with sudden and unpredictable attack, MS results in varies mood disorder include of hopelessness in patients lives. therefore, This research was aimed at studying the effectiveness of cognitive-existential group therapy on hopelessness in patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). This study was performed using semi-experimental and the extended pretest-posttest design. The statistical population included all patients with MS supported by the MS Society of Mazandaran, Iran, in 2013. A group of 20 supported females were selected using accessible sampling method, and they were placed randomly in 10-member groups of experiment and control. All participants completed the hopelessness beck (BHS) measurement test in both pre-test and post-test stages. The experiment group received the intervention in 8 sessions, but the control group did not receive any interventions. The descriptive statistics and covariance analysis were applied to analyze the data. The covariance analysis results indicated that the cognitive-existential group therapy causes a significant decrease in poor motivation sub scale of hopelessness in the experiment group. According to findings of present research, it can be concluded that the cognitive-existential method is an effective way of solving the emotional problems of patients with MS.