The efficacy of mindfulness based stress reduction on cognitive emotion regulation in patients with psoriasis

Psoriasis is a chronic skin disease. Emotion regulation difficulty in patients with psoriasis emphasizes the importance of including a broader approach in clinical management of psoriatic patients. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on cognitive emotion regulation in patients with psoriasis.

This study was a semi-experimental study with pre-test, post-test and follow-up. The study population included all the patients with psoriasis referred to specialized dermatology clinics in Khorramabad. The patients were first screened using the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Then 24 patients with psoriasis were selected through convenience sampling method and randomly allocated into experimental and control groups. The instrumental of this study was Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski & Kraaij, 2006). The experimental group received MBSR intervention during eight sessions. Data analysis was done at descriptive and inferential levels using version 23 of SPSS and with normality tests, MANCOVA and ANCOVA.

MBSR increased the scores of adaptive strategies and decreased the scores of maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies in patient with psoriasis and the effect of treatment was stable at the end of follow-up period (P<0.001).

MBSR skills training can be used as an effective intervention to improve cognitive emotion regulation in patients with psoriasis.