Effectiveness of Analytical Group Therapy in Perceived Stress, Severity of Gastrointestinal Symptoms, and Perfectionism among Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a chronic gastrointestinal dysfunction. Patients experience abdominal pain and different intestinal symptoms in the absence of any structural or biological abnormalities. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of an analytical treatment group on perceived stress, the severity of gastrointestinal symptoms, and perfectionism in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). The present study was a semi-experimental design of pre-test, post-test, and follow-up with the control group. The statistical population of the study included patients with irritable bowel syndrome referred to medical centers in Tehran in 2019, among which 68 patients were selected by convenience sampling method. Among them, 20 patients were assigned to two groups of analytical therapy (n=10) and the control group (n=10) using a simple random sampling method. Data were obtained using the perceived stress scale (PSS), multidimensional perfectionism scale, and irritable bowel syndrome symptom severity index. Repeated measure analysis of variance method and SPSS.22 software were used. The results showed that analytical group therapy significantly reduced perceived stress (p <0.001), perfectionism (p <0.001), and severity of gastrointestinal symptoms (p <0.001) in irritable bowel syndrome patients. It can be concluded that analytical group therapy is effective on perceived stress, perfectionism, and severity of symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome and analytical group therapy can be used to reduce the problems of patients with irritable bowel syndrome.