Investigating the Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy on the Intolerance of Uncertainty and Tolerance of Ambiguity in Female Patients Suffering from Compulsive Washing

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is one of the mental disorders that has a great impact on the quality of life and reducing a person's resistance to the disorder. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of single-process cognitive-behavioral therapy on intolerance of uncertainty and tolerance of ambiguity in female patients with compulsive washing.

Methods and Materials: 

The research was a semi-experimental type with a pre-test, post-test and follow-up test design. The statistical population included all young women suffering from washing obsessions who had referred to the counseling and psychological research center in Neyshabur during the first quarter of 2018. Among them, 60 people were voluntarily selected and after the initial pre-test of the Yale Brown Washing Obsession Questionnaire, 30 people who had the highest level of disorder were selected and randomly divided into two groups (15 experimental and 15 control people) were replaced. Then the CBT cognitive behavioral therapy protocol, which was developed by the researcher in the form of 8 sessions of 45 minutes in a period of 2 months, one session per week, was implemented on the experimental group. Two experimental and control groups were taken. The data were analyzed through variance analysis with repeated measurements.

The results showed that the modular cognitive behavioral intervention increases the intolerance of uncertainty and tolerance of ambiguity (p<0. 05).

Therefore, it can be concluded that the modular cognitive-behavioral therapy can be suggested as an effective intervention in the treatment of increasing uncertainty tolerance and ambiguity tolerance of the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder.