Comparison the effectiveness of mindfulness based cognitive therapy and reality therapy on cognitive emotion regulation in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorders

Numerous studies have compared the efficacy of cognitive therapy based on mindfulness awareness and reality therapy and cognitive emotion regulation. . But there is research about comparing the effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and reality therapy on cognitive emotion regulation in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder.

The aim of this study was to compare the effect of cognitive therapy and reality therapy on emotion regulation in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder.

This study was a quasi-experimental with pre-test-post-test and a one-month follow-up period using two experimental and one control group design. Mothers of children with autism spectrum in Mashhad were selected by convenience sampling method and randomly assigned into three groups of 12 each. Subjects responded to Garnefsky et al.'s (2001) Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire before and after the intervention and one month after the follow-up. One group underwent mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (Mohammadkhani & Khanipour, 1396) and the other group underwent reality therapy (Wobolding, 2013) for ten 90-minute sessions weekly with no intervention during this period. The control group did not last long. Multivariate analysis of covariance and Scheffe post hoc tests were used to analyze the data.

The results showed that there was a significant difference between the effect of the two treatments on the variable scores of cognitive emotion regulation (P≤ 0/05) and cognitive mindfulness-based cognitive therapy had more effect on mothers' cognitive emotion regulation compared to reality therapy.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy can be used to improve cognitive emotion regulation in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder.