Effectiveness of Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) on Subjective Well-Being in Women with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE)

Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is a multisystem autoimmune disorder with a wide range of clinical manifestations. The present research was conducted by the aim of investigating the effectiveness of compassion-focused therapy (CFT) on subjective wellbeing of women with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.

The current study was a semi-experimental research type in which pre-test post-test and follow-up with control group design was used. The research population included all the female patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus referring to the Rheumatology Clinic of Imam Khomeini Hospital and Tooba Clinic of Sari city, Iran, in 2019. The sample included 40 female patients who were selected via available sampling method and were assigned into experiment and control groups by random assignment method. The data gathering tool was the Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire of Mowlavi and colleagues (2010) which was completed by the subjects of both groups in pre-test, post-test and follow-up phases. Compassion-focused therapy was provided for the subjects of the experiment group in eight 120-minute sessions. To analyse the data, variance analysis with repeated measures and the Bonferroni post hoc test in SPSS24 were used.

Results indicated that compassion-focused therapy significantly increased subjective wellbeing in the patients of the intervention group compared to the control group, and the results were sufficiently stable in the follow-up phase. Also, therapeutic intervention was effective in increasing positive emotions and reducing negative emotions in patients (p <0.01).

According to these results, it appears that compassion-focused therapy is probably a suitable interventional option for enhancing mental health among patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.