Effects of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy on Social Adjustment in Women With MS

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a central nervous system disease that affects the quality of life and biopsychological wellbeing of the individual. A critical factor that exacerbates MS illness is stress induced by life events. This disease threatens the individual's independence and ability to participate in the family and community effectively and leads patients to lack competence and self-confidence. A determining variable in the mental health of patients with MS is Social Adjustment (SA). SA-related problems can affect individual and social commitments and complicate individual and social health. An intervention with a therapeutic philosophy based on creating and maintaining appropriate solutions is Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT). The effectiveness of this intervention on improving the social adjustment of women with MS has not been well studied in previous research. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the effects of SFBT on SA levels in women with MS.

This was a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest and a control group design. The statistical population of this study included all women with MS in Bukan City, Iran, in 2017; a complete list of these individuals was available in the MS Society of Bukan County. The total number of this group equaled 236 who were examined by the Social Adjustment Scale (at pretest and posttest) (Weissman & Paykel, 1974). Accordingly, 40 subjects whose SA score was less than the other participants' score and met the research's inclusion criteria were randomly assigned to the control and test groups (n=20/group). The inclusion criteria had a concurrent illness, receiving other psychological therapies, and consent to attend meetings. The exclusion criteria included the presence of concurrent illnesses and a complete absence from meetings. The experimental group received seven 90-minute SFBT sessions. Furthermore, descriptive statistics, including mean and standard deviation, and inferential statistics, including Independent Samples t-test, Chi-squared test (to compare the demographic characteristics of the two groups), and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to analyze the obtained data in SPSS at the significance level of 0.05.

The present research results indicated that after adjusting the effect of the pretest, there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups respecting the mean scores of SA as well as its subscales, including daily activities, social and extracurricular activities, marital relationships, parental relationships and family relationships at posttest (p<0.001); however, in the subscales of relationships with relatives (p=0.081) and economic status (p=0.181) there was no significant difference between the mean scores of pretest and posttest stages.

Based on the collected findings, SFBT effectively promoted SA in female patients with MS. Accordingly, it is recommended that psychologists, counselors, social workers, and rehabilitation assistants implement SFBT for managing these patients.