The effectiveness of emotion regulation training on pain intensity and life quality in patients with peptic ulcer disease (PUD)

Because gastric ulcer is a psychosomatic disease in which many psychological factors are involved, this study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of emotion regulation training on pain intensity and quality of life in patients with peptic ulcer disease.

The research method was semi-experimental and based on the pretest-posttest control group design, with follow-up after three months. The sample included 46 participants who were selected by a purposeful sampling method and placed randomly in the experimental and control groups. At first, at the same time, and in the same conditions, all the participants responded to the Chronic Pain Grade questionnaire (CPG) and Quality of life Questionnaire (SF-12). The emotion regulation training was performed for the experimental group. In the end, both groups were evaluated by posttests, and then they were tracked after an interval of three months. In order to analyze data, ANCOVA test was applied through SPSS 22.

Findings showed that emotion regulation training was meaningfully effective in decreasing pain intensity and increasing life quality (p<0.01) and after three months, no significant changes were found in the results.

Due to the positive changes in the criteria of this protocol effectiveness, it is concluded that emotion regulation training has been successful in reducing the symptoms of pain intensity in PUD patients and increasing life quality, this treatment can be added to other treatments for PUD patients.