The Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on Increasing Optimism in Addicts

Addiction is one of the biggest problems of human communities that endangers the public health, families and individuals. This study aimed to assess the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral group therapy on increasing life expectancy among drug addicts in Qorveh. This study is of a pretest-posttest experimental research type with the presence of a control group. The research population includes the addicts who were admitted in methadone-therapy treatment center in Qorveh (Nikoo Salamat) in 2013. 50 individuals of admitted addicts were randomly selected as the initial samples of the study. Then, based on the obtainedscores from the questionnaire, 20 individuals who got the low scores in life expectancy were randomly assigned in two experimental and control groups. The experimental group received the cognitive behavioral group therapy treatment in 12 90-minute sessions. But the control group received no treatment. Schneider's life expectancy questionnaire was used for data collection. Analysis of covariance was used for data analyses.Findings and The results showed that the life expectancy mean score in the post-test of experimental group was greater than that of control group. The cognitive-behavioral therapy has increased the life expectancy among the participants of the experimental group.