Comparison of effectiveness of Metacognitive therapy and Pilates exercises on loneliness feeling and dysfunctional attitudes in female students with Premenstrual Syndrome

This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of Metacognitive therapy and Pilates exercises on loneliness feelings and dysfunctional attitudes in female students with Premenstrual Syndrome. The present study is a part of applied research and a semi-experimental pre-test-post-test design with a two-month follow-up. The research population included all female students suffering from premenstrual syndrome in the Islamic Azad University, Dorud Branch, in the academic year 1400-1401, There were 520 women, of which 45 women were selected by purposive sampling method, and they were randomly replaced in three groups. The tools of this research included the Premenstrual Screening Questionnaire (PSST) by Steiner et al. (2003), the Loneliness Scale - Third Edition (UCLA LS3) by Russell (1996), and the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale (DAS-26) by Wiseman and Beck (1978). The analysis method of this research was a repeated measures test. The findings showed that there is a significant difference between the post-test of the experimental and control groups in both the variables of loneliness feelings and dysfunctional attitudes (p≤0.001). That is, the Pilates and metacognition groups have significantly reduced the feelings of loneliness and dysfunctional attitudes compared to the control group, also the metacognition group significantly performed better than the Pilates group in the two variables of loneliness (p≤0.001), and dysfunctional attitudes (p≤0.042). Based on this, it can be concluded that the metacognition intervention was more effective than Pilates exercises in improving feelings of loneliness and dysfunctional attitudes.