Effect of Cognitive Restructuring Therapy on Anxiety in Substance Abusers

The substance-dependent individuals encounter different psychological pressures including anxiety disorders. Studies have showed about forty percent of alcohol-dependent individuals have been diagnosed as one of the subtypes of the anxiety disorders during their life. Also, previous studies have showed cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) is very effective in reducing substance use and relapses, coping with negative emotions and improving patients’ wellbeing. Given the effectiveness of CBT, the present study was conducted to investigate effectiveness of cognitive reconstruction as part of CBT in reducing the anxiety of the substance users. Based on cognitive reconstruction theory, the individual’s reactions to events are determined not by the features of the events but by the individual’s interpretation of them; in other words, how individual reacts to events of his/her life, depends on his/her special definition and interpretation of them. The present study employed a two group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design.  The Study population included all men who had referred to rehabilitation center of Malard. Convenience sampling was used to recruit 38 participants. The research instrument was Spielberger State-trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). The reliability of the normalized version of the research instrument is reported to be 0.91 and for trait anxiety scale. The participants were assigned to experimental and control groups. Each group included 19 participants. Two weeks before beginning the treatment, the participants filled STAI as the baseline. Then, experimental group received cognitive reconstruction in shape of group therapy for nine sessions while the control group received no therapy. Finally, two weeks after the treatment, all the participants were asked to fill STAI as the post-test. Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) was used to test the research hypotheses.  The results showed there is a significant difference between two groups in general anxiety as well as state anxiety and trait anxiety (p<0.01) in the post-test after removing preexisting differences through MANCOVA procedures. It is concluded that that substance-dependent individuals are more anxious than non-dependent individuals: In addition, cognitive reconstruction therapy could result in reducing state and trait anxiety of the substance-dependent individuals. So cognitive reconstruction therapy (as a part of CBT) can help substance-dependent individuals to control and reduce their anxiety.