Comparison of the Effectiveness of Compassion-Focused Therapy and Interpersonal Psychotherapy on the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation in with Coronary Artery Disease: A Pilot Study

Psychological factors can play an important role in coronary artery disease and its treatment. This study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of compassion-focused therapy and interpersonal therapy on the difficulty in regulating emotions in women with coronary artery disease.

This semi-experimental study was conducted with a pre-test, post-test and followup design with a control group with the participation of 41 women with coronary artery disease referred to the Cardiac Rehabilitation Clinic of Afshar Hospital in Yazd. The participants were selected purposefully and randomly assigned to two intervention groups and one control group. The first intervention group focused on compassion, and the second group received interpersonal therapy in eight weekly 90-minute sessions, but the control group did not receive any intervention. We collected data by using the Gratz & Roemer emotion regulation difficulty questionnaire. Data were analyzed using covariance analysis test and SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 24.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, Ill., USA).

The mean (SD) age of participants in the compassion-focused therapy group was 48.8 (6.5), the interpersonal psychotherapy group 53.7 (7.4), and the control group 55.7 (6.1) years. In the compassionfocused therapy group, the mean (SD) difficulty in regulating emotions ranged from 108.1 (22.7) in the pretest to 84.6 (13.7) in the post-test and 83.5 (10.2) decreased in the follow-up phase (P<0.05). In the interpersonal psychotherapy group, the mean (SD) difficulty in emotion regulation decreased from 117(31.8) in the pre-test to 82.5(15.7) in the post-test and 81.5 (6.4) in the follow-up phase (P<0.05). However, there was no difference in the difficulty scores of emotion regulation in the pre-test and post-test in the control group.

The study showed both treatment methods improved patients' difficulty in emotion regulation. But, they did not differ in terms of the effect.