The Effectiveness of Positive Psychotherapy on Psychosocial inflexibility and Self-Efficacy of Pain in Women with Chronic Pain

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of positive psychotherapy on pain self-efficacy and psychosocial inflexibility in women with chronic pain. Semi-experimental research design was a pre-test and post-test type with control group. The statistical population included all women with chronic pain in Isfahan. The sample size of the study consisted of 30 women with chronic pain. They were selected by purposeful sampling and randomly assigned to two groups of experimental and control groups. The experimental group underwent a positive therapeutic educational intervention of 6 sessions weekly sessions while the control group received no training at all. The data collection tools were PES (Nicholas, 1989) and pain psychological inflexibility (PSEQ) (Wicksell et al., 2010). The results of covariance analysis indicated that there were significant differences between the scores of self-efficacy of pain and the dimensions of the psychological inflexibility of the pain in the experimental and control groups in the post-test stage. At the post-test stage, the experimental group in comparison with the control group, obtained more scores in the degree of self-efficacy and less scores in psychosocial disorder. Based on the findings, it could say that the treatment of positive psychology is an important factor in improving the self-efficacy and pain relief in patients with chronic pain.