Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy with and without Neurofeedback, Neurofeedback on Treatment and Increasing Women's Psychological Wellbeing with Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Introductoin:

 This study aims to discover the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy with and without Neurofeedback, and also Neurofeedback's effect on the treatment and increasing psychological wellbeing in women with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).

To carry out this research, 80 individuals, who suffered from a generalized anxiety disorder and visited 4 counseling centers in the suburbs of Tehran, were selected. In two stages pre-test and post-test, they were measured through the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) test and Ryff Psychological Well-being Inventory in 3 groups of treatment and 1 control group. Based on therapeutic protocol, 2 treatment groups were given 30 sessions of Neurofeedback training and 15 sessions of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and the control group did not receive any intervention. For data analysis, descriptive and multivariate analysis of variance (Manova) methods by SPSS software were used.

The results showed that treatment alone reduced anxiety and increased the improvement of psychological well-being in the treatment groups in the post-test compared to the pre-test. But this change was not observed in the control group, and when these two treatments were used together, the therapeutic effect increased.

Using Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and Neurofeedback alone are effective in treating and improving the psychological well-being of women with generalized anxiety disorder, and their combination has a greater therapeutic effect.