Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Intervention on Adherence to Health Promotion Behaviors and Psychological Flexibility in Autoimmune (Psoriasis) Patients

The incidence of chronic physical diseases such as Psoriasis causes psychological and physical traumas in the patients. Therefore the present study was conducted aiming to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral intervention on health promotion behaviors and psychological flexibility in autoimmune (psoriasis) patients.

The present study was quasi-experimental with pretest, posttest, control group and two-month follow-up design. The statistical population of the study included autoimmune (psoriasis) patients in Tehran in autumn and winter of 2019-20. 30 autoimmune (psoriasis) patients were selected through non-random volunteer and purposeful sampling method and they were randomly accommodated into experimental and control groups (15 patients in the experimental and 15 in the control groups). The experimental group received ten ninety-minute sessions of cognitive-behavioral intervention during two and a-half months. The applied questionnaires in the current study included the questionnaire of health promotion behaviors (Walker et.al, 1987) and psychological flexibility questionnaire (Denis and Wanderwall, 2010). The data from the study were analyzed through repeated measurement ANOVA.

The results showed that the cognitive-behavioral intervention has been effective on health promotion behaviors and psychological flexibility of autoimmune (psoriasis) patients, as this therapy has succeeded in the improvement of health promotion behaviors and psychological flexibility in these patients.

According to the findings of the present study it can be concluded that the cognitive-behavioral therapy can be used as an efficient therapy to improve health promotion behaviors and psychological flexibility in autoimmune (psoriasis) patients relying on following automatic thoughts to identify fundamental beliefs, training behavioral methods and cognitive errors and inefficient thoughts.