The Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Therapy and Short-Term Solution-Focused Therapy on the Sense of Coherence of Women with Multiple Sclerosis

Because MS affects both the body and mind, people with MS need to be treated by both pharmacological and psychological interventions. Psychological interventions involve using a variety of counseling and psychotherapy approaches, including mindfulness-based therapy and short-term solution-focused therapy. The purpose of this study was to compare the efficacy of mindfulness-based therapy and short-term solution-focused therapy on sense of coherence in MS patients.

This study used a quasi-experimental method with pre-test, post-test, follow up, and the control group. The population under study consisted of all women with MS in Tabriz who were members of MS Society in Tabriz in 2019. In total, 30 women were selected by purposive sampling as the participants and randomly divided into three groups; the mindfulness-based therapy, short-term solution-focused therapy, and control the group. The participants in the three groups were tested by Flensberg Sense of Coherence Questionnaire before, after, and four months after the treatment. The members of both experimental groups received their own treatment respectively in 8 and 7 sessions each lasting 1.5 hours. The collected data were analyzed by repeated measures ANOVA and Bonferroni post hoc test.

The mean scores of sense of coherence for the mindfulness-based treatment group, the short-term solution-focused treatment group, and the control group on the posttest were 50.10±3.72, 49.60±3.66, and 49.20±3.36, respectively. The results showed that the mindfulness-based therapy (55.20±3.52) and short-term solution-focused therapy (55.50±2.98) compared to the control group (48.80±3.58) increased the sense of coherence in MS patients on the posttest (p=0.001). Besides, the effect of mindfulness-based therapy (50.40±3.40) and short-term solution-focused therapy (55.10±3.10) on the sense of coherence (16.90±3.77) persisted in the follow-up phase (p <0.001). It was also shown that the mindfulness-based therapy and short-term solution-based therapy did not show any significant differences in terms of their effects on the feeling of cohesion at posttest and follow-up phases (p <0.05).

It was found that the mindfulness-based therapy, and the slow discovery of exceptions in the life of the MS patients in short-term solution-focused therapy reduced the patients' stress and thus enabling them to better cope with their illness, This in turn increased the sense of coherence in patients with MS. Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that mindfulness-based therapy and short-term solution-focused therapy increased the sense of coherence of MS patients.