Investigating the effect of neurofeedback (NF) and transcranial direct electrical stimulation (tDCS) on reducing the level of depression, anxiety and stress in patients referred to comprehensive health service centers in Zahedan

The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of neurofeedback (NF) and transcranial direct electrical stimulation (tDCS) on reducing the level of depression, anxiety and stress of patients referred to comprehensive health service centers in Zahedan.

The research design was pre-test-post-test with test groups (transcranial direct electrical stimulation (tDCS) and neurofeedback (NF)) and control group. The statistical population consisted of all patients with three disorders of depression, anxiety, and stress who referred to mental health experts in comprehensive health service centers in Zahedan city, from which a sample of 45 people was selected by simple random sampling method, so 30 people in the groups In the experiment, the first intervention group received 10 sessions of transcranial direct electrical stimulation (tDCS), the second group received 12 sessions of neurofeedback (NF), while 15 people in the control group were not given any training. After completing the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) questionnaire, data was collected and then analyzed using SPSS version 23 software.

The results of the multivariate covariance analysis showed that the average scores of depression, anxiety and stress between the pre- and post-test scores of the treatment groups were significantly reduced. The results of Tukey's post hoc test showed that transcranial direct electrical stimulation (TDCS) is lower than neurofeedback (NF) in reducing depression, anxiety and stress