Comparison of the effect of mindfulness based cognitive therapy and Iranian-Islamic positive therapy on pain catastrophizing and severity symptoms in women with irritable bowel syndrome

Irritable bowel syndrome is the most common, expensive, and debilitating gastrointestinal dysfunction. Psychological factors have a profound effect on its onset, duration and severity. This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of mindfulness based cognitive therapy and Iranian-Islamic positive therapy on pain catastrophizing and symptom severity in women with irritable bowel syndrome.

In this study, semi-experimental research was done on three groups with the two-step plan of pre and post-test.The study sample consisted of 45 women with irritable bowel syndrome in the age range of 18 to 50 years in 2019 which were selected by purposive sampling based on inclusion and exclusion criteria with random assignment in three groups (one control and two experimental groups). To measure the research variables, ROME III diagnostic tool, the diagnostic structured interview for DSM-V-RV (SCID-I), Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS) and Bowel Symptom Severity and Frequency (BSS-FS) questionnaire were used in pre-test and post-test phases were used. The groups of mindfulness based cognitive therapy and Iranian-Islamic positive therapy were treated for 8 sessions and the control group remained in the waiting list. Data were analyzed using SPSS23 software and ANCOVA test.

The results showed that there was a significant difference between mindfulness based cognitive therapy and Iranian-Islamic positive therapy with control group in pain catastrophizing (p < 0.01) and severity of symptoms (P < 0.01), but no significant difference was seen between the two treatments (p>0.05).

Based on the findings of this study, it seems that mindfulness based cognitive therapy and Iranian-Islamic positive therapy can be used as a psychological treatment to reduce the catastrophizing and severity of symptoms in women with irritable bowel syndrome.