The Effectiveness of "Positive Psychotherapy" on the Potential to Use Opiates and the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation of Patients with Opiates

Health-threatening behaviors, including opioid use, are one of the most important psychosocial health challenges. One of the psychological therapies that is considered today is “Positive Psychotherapy”. The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of "Positive Psychotherapy" on the Potential to use opiates and the difficulties in emotion regulation of patients with opiates.

The present study was a quasi-experimental with pre-test, post-test and two-month follow-up with the control group. The study population included all people with drug abuse who referred to addiction treatment centers in Rasht in 1400. 30 participants were selected by cluster random sampling and divided into two groups of intervention and control (15 people in each group). Data were collected using a demographic questionnaire, "Addiction Potential Scale" and "Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale". The validity of the instruments was measured by content validity by qualitative method and the reliability by internal consistency method was calculated by calculating the Cronbach's coefficient. The "Positive Psychotherapy" intervention was performed on the intervention group for 8 sessions of 90 minutes once a week. The collected data were analyzed in SPSS.23.

The results of repeated measures analysis of variance showed that between the intervention and control groups in the variables of substance use tendency (P= 0.001, F=25.32) and difficulties in emotion regulation (P=0. 001, F=32/157). There was a significant difference and the intervention was effective. Overall, “Positive Psychotherapy” explains 40.5% of the score changes in substance use Potential and 54.5% of the score changes in difficulties in emotion regulation.

“Positive Psychotherapy” is effective on the Potential to use opiates and difficulties in emotion regulation of patients with opioids. It is suggested that addiction therapists use the above method as a practical and effective treatment method to improve addictive behaviors and prevent relapse of patients with drugs.