Comparing the Effectiveness of Compassion-Based Emotion-Focused Combination Therapy Package With Compassion-Focused Treatment on Quality of Life in Patients With Primary Headache Symptoms

The formulation of emotion-focused and compassion-focused behavioral intervention therapy can explain the relationship between the dimensions of problems and the health promotion of patients with headache symptoms and present the first combined treatment for emotional problems and the sedation of the nervous system to investigate and comprehensively prevent the symptoms of primary headaches.

This was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest, posttest, and follow-up with a control group. The sample consisted of 45 patients with primary headache symptoms who were referred to the neurology clinic of Khatam Al-Anbia Hospital in Tehran City, Iran. They were selected by the purposive sampling method and randomly divided into two experimental groups and a control group (15 people in each group). The experimental groups underwent a combination of compassion-based emotion therapy (ten 60-min sessions) and compassion-focused treatment (eight 60-min sessions). The control group received no intervention. After collecting the data, they were entered into the SPSS software, version 24. Descriptive statistical indices (mean and standard deviation) and statistical inference (repeated measures analysis of variance and the Bonferroni post hoc test) were used to analyze the data.

The findings showed that the quality of life variable is not significant because of the non-compliance with the spheric default in the intragroup effect and time factor (F = 3.47, df = 1.15, and P < 0.05); however, the interaction of the factor of time and group (F = 8.25, df = 2.31, and P < 0.01) shows a significant difference (P < 0.01) in the quality of life variable between pretest, posttest, and follow-up and time interaction with the group (between the three groups).

Compassion-based emotion-based combination therapy packages can help control the current situation and subsequent decisions of patients in the face of the signs and symptoms of early headaches by creating a calm mental environment and relieving any pressure or stress. Therefore, compassion-based emotion-based combination therapy is a treatment option that can be used to increase the quality of life of people with primary headaches.