Effectiveness of emotion-oriented and intensive and short-term psychodynamic therapy on personality organization and ego strength in people with tension headaches

 Headache is one of the most common medical complaints and a debilitating neurological disorder in neurological clinics that affects the organization of patients' personality; Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of short-term and intensive emotional-oriented therapy on personality organization and ego strength in women with tension headaches.

 This study was a semi-experimental method with a pre-test, post-test and two-month follow-up plan with a control group. The target population was all patients with tension headaches who referred to the specialized neurology clinic in Tehran in 1401. The sample size was determined by referring to Cohen's table. In this way, at the confidence level of 95%, the effect size was 0.30 and the statistical power was 0.83 for each group of 12 people. However, since there was a possibility of some samples falling and also in order to generalize the results, the sample size was determined to be 15 people in each group. In the first step, 45 people were selected by available sampling method, and in the second step, these 45 people were replaced in 2 experimental groups (15 people) and a control group (15 people) in a simple random way (by lottery).

  The results of the study indicated the effect of the emotion-oriented method and intensive and short-term dynamic psychotherapy on the dimensions of personality organization and ego strength in tension headache sufferers (P≤0.001) and the effectiveness of both methods was similar (P≥ 0.05)..

 According to the results, specialists active in the psycho-physical field, especially tension headaches, can consider the use of emotion-oriented methods and intensive and short-term dynamic psychotherapy in the treatment of these people, along with other treatments.