Comparing the effectiveness of mindfulness-based therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy on reducing anxiety in patients with migraine headaches

The experience of anxiety is one of the basic challenges of patients suffering from migraine headaches, which requires providing effective interventions for it. The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of mindfulness-based therapy with cognitive behavioral therapy in reducing anxiety in patients with migraine headaches. The research method was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design and a one-month follow-up with a control group. The statistical population of the research was women suffering from chronic migraine headaches who had visited Sari hospitals in 2022. 45 people were selected by purposive sampling and randomly assigned to three groups (15 people in each group). The research tool included the Depression- Anxiety- Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21). Mindfulness therapy group and cognitive behavioral therapy group received 8 sessions of intervention. The results of repeated measurement variance analysis showed that the source of changes was time (P=0.001 and F=57.59), group (P= 0.001 and F=39.06) and the interaction between time and group (P=0.001 and F=12/83) is significant. Bonferroni pairwise comparison showed that the mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy groups had a significantly lower average in the post-test and follow-up stages compared to the control group (P<0.01). Also, the results showed that the cognitive-behavioral group had a lower average anxiety level compared to the mindfulness group in the post-test (P=0.05) and follow-up (P=0.05) stages. The results of the research showed the preference of using cognitive behavioral therapy compared to mindfulness therapy to improve anxiety in patients with migraine headaches by psychologists and migraine headache treatment centers.