The effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral group therapy in anxiety and self-esteem in patients with multiple sclerosis

The present study was conducted aimed at investigating the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral group therapy in anxiety and self-esteem in patients with multiple sclerosis.

In this clinical trial ‎with a pretest-posttest and ‎control group design, 20 multiple sclerosis patients were selected through convenience sampling method from the Multiple Sclerosis Association of Mashhad in 2016 and were randomly assigned into two experimental and control groups. The experimental group received cognitive-behavioral group therapy for 2 hours per week for 10 weeks, but the control group received no treatment. In the pretest and posttest, Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and The Cooper-Smith Self-Esteem Inventory (CSEI) were implemented for both groups. Data analysis was performed using the analysis of covariance and t-test.

The results demonstrated that cognitive-behavioral group therapy significantly leads to reduced anxiety (P<0.001) and enhanced overall self-esteem (P<0.001), general self-esteem (P=0.002), family self-esteem (P=0.005) and occupational-academic self-esteem (P=0.003) compared to the control group. But no significant difference was observed in the scores of social self-esteem (P=0.388).

Cognitive-behavioral group therapy can reduce anxiety and increase self-esteem of multiple sclerosis patients