Comparing cognitive rehabilitation and mixed treatment of cognitive rehabilitation with emotion regulation on quality of life in HIV patients with neurocognitive disorders

The aim of this study is to compare cognitive rehabilitation and mixed treatment of cognitive rehabilitation with emotion regulation on quality of life in patients with HIV-associated Neurocognitive Disorder (HAND). This study was a quasi-experimental research conducted in form of pretest-posttest and follow-up, with two experimental groups. 46 HIV patients that had HIV-associated Neurocognitive Disorder, were selected and were included randomly in two experimental group (n=23). One experimental group administered a cognitive rehabilitation and another experimental group received both cognitive rehabilitation and emotion regulation. Participants completed the WHOQOL-HIV-BREF questionnaire in the pretest, posttest and follow-up assessment. The data were analyzed using ANOVA with repeated measure. The results illustrate that the two groups differed at post-assessment. In particular, the experimental group 2 showed a remarkable improvement in WHOQOL-HIV-BREF. At the follow-up assessment, the experimental group 2 also showed more improvement than experimental group 1. However, there was a slight decrease in follow-up assessment in comparison to the post-assessment in both groups. The results showed that combination therapy of cognitive rehabilitation and emotion regulation is more effective than cognitive rehabilitation alone, in improving the quality of life of HIV patients with neurocognitive disorders (HAND).