A Comparative Study on the Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Spiritual Therapy on Increasing CD4 Cells Count and Quality of Life in AIDS Patients

 AIDS is a medical and social problem, which has a high prevalence in Iran. The present study was conducted to compare the effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction and spiritual therapy techniques on increasing CD4 cells and quality of life (QOL) in AIDS patients.

 The present quasi-experimental study was performed with a pretest-posttest design and a control group. The statistical population of the study included all AIDS patients who referred to health centers in Shahriar, Iran, in 2018. From among those referred to these health centers, 45 people were selected using a convenience sampling method and were assigned to 3 groups. The patients were evaluated using the World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF Questionnaire (WHOQOL-BREF) (WHOQOL Group, 1998) and blood tests to check CD4 cells. Then, participants in the experimental groups received mindfulness-based stress reduction and spiritual therapy during 8 sessions of 90 minutes, but the control group did not receive any training. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to examine the research data.

 The results showed that spiritual therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques had a significant effect on increasing CD4 cells and QOL in AIDS patients (P < 0.001).

 It can be concluded that mindfulness-based stress reduction had a significant effect on increasing CD4 cells and QOL in AIDS patients. Moreover, mindfulness-based stress reduction was more effective than spirituality therapy on QOL.