The Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Skill Training Based on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy on Cognitive Emotion Regulation and Quality of Life of Patients With Cardiovascular Diseases

Psychological factors play a significant role in the exacerbation of cardiovascular diseases. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of teaching emotion regulation skill (based on dialectical behavioral therapy) on cognitive emotion regulation and Quality of Life (QoL) of patients with cardiovascular diseases.

 The present study has a quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest and the control group. The statistical population of the study included all patients with cardiovascular diseases in Kermanshah City, Iran in 2018. Among them, 30 participants were selected by simple random sampling method. Then, they were randomly assigned to the two groups of experimental and control (each group 15 patients). We performed the intervention of excited ordering education based on dialectical behavioral therapy for the experimental group in eight 90-minute sessions, while the control group did not receive any intervention during this period. To collect study information, we used a short form of the emotional cognitive regulation questionnaire and MacNew Quality of Life Questionnaire. To analyze the data, we used the multivariate analysis of covariance in SPSS V. 20.

 The Research Ethics Committee of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences approved this study (Code: IR.KUMS.REC.1397.39).

 The results showed that the scores of Positive Cognitive-Emotional Strategies and quality of life of cardiovascular patients after training of emotional regulation skills based on dialectical behavioral therapy in experimental group significantly increased in comparison with control group, and also Negative Strategies Scores were decreased (P<0.01). 

 Based on our positive study results, we recommend the therapists to use psychological treatments as complementary therapies for these patients.