Effectiveness of Emotional-Focused Therapy on Pain Acceptance and the Mental Health Dimensions among Patients with Urticaria

Chronic urticaria is a disease could result in irritation and disability among patients. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of emotion-focused therapy on pain acceptance and the mental health dimensions among patients with urticaria.

This study was of semi-experimental design with pretest-post-test and control group. The population of this study included all patients with urticaria who were referred to Imam Khomeini Hospital in Tehran in 2017, among whom 60 were randomly selected and assigned to two experimental and control groups, each containing 30. The experimental group participated in eight sessions of emotionalfocused therapy. Chronic pain acceptance questionnaire and general health questionnaire were completed by both groups. Data were analyzed using covariance analysis in SPSS software version 22.

The mean (SD) age of the respondents was 41.3 (6.4) years. The mean (SD) score of the health problems of the experimental group was 47.4 (8.5) in the pretest, which decreased to 40.5 (5.3) in the posttest and the mean (SD) of not accepting pain in the experimental group was 30.1 (4.1) pretest, which decreased to 27.19 (3.5) but the mean (SD) of both variables in the pre-test and post-test of the control group did not show a significant difference.

It can be concluded that emotional-focused group therapy improved pain acceptance and mental health dimensions of patients with Urticaria.