Effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and transcranial direct-current stimulation on worry and emotion regulation in fibromyalgia patients

The aim of this research was a comparison of the effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Transcranial direct-current Stimulation (tDCS) in worry, Emotion Regulation, and their subcomponents in fibromyalgia patients.

The study was a semi-experimental pretest-posttest with two experimental and one Sham group. 36 people were selected by the available sampling method from Fibromyalgia patients who were referred to rheumatologists in Tehran during 1399 and randomly classified into three MBCT, tDCS, and sham groups. The members of these groups were asked to complete the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) and The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) before and after the intervention.

Multivariate Covariance analysis showed that in terms of worry variable, both treatments were effective in comparison with the Sham group, Also the MBCT was significantly more effective than tDCS (P<0.05). In terms of emotion regulation components, a significant difference between tDCS and the Sham group was seen in negative emotion. However, the MBCT method was significantly more effective than the sham group in both negative and positive emotion components of emotion regulation (P<0.05).

Based on the results of this study, it is recommended to employ both MBCT and tDCS to treat fibromyalgia patients.