The Effectiveness of Attribution Retraining Intervention on Dysfunctional Attitudes and Coping Skills of Individuals Undergoing Methadone Maintenance Treatment

This research aimed to investigate the effectiveness of attribution retraining intervention on dysfunctional attitudes and coping skills in individuals undergoing methadone maintenance treatment.

The current research was semi-experimental with a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The statistical population included all substance-dependent patients undergoing methadone treatment referring to addiction treatment centers in the city of Semnan in 2018. Among them, 34 people were selected by the convenience sampling method and were randomly assigned to two experimental (n = 17) and control (n = 17) groups. Participants of both groups completed the dysfunctional attitude scale and the coping skills questionnaire in the pretest and posttest. Attribution retraining intervention was implemented in seven 120-minute sessions with the frequency of one session per week on the experimental group. Data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance.

The findings revealed that there was a significant difference between the two groups, and attribution retraining intervention improved dysfunctional attitudes and emotion-oriented coping in the experimental group.

According to the obtained results, experts in the field of addiction can emphasize the improvement of dysfunctional attitudes and emotion-oriented coping using attribution retraining intervention.