Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy on Thinking Rumination in Patients suffering Major Depression Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Major depression and obsessive–compulsive disorders are one of the chronic and disabling disorders that affect the ability to experience normal mood, often causing impairment in the biological and environmental performance of the individual; effective factors must be known, recognized and controlled for treatment. One of the most influential factors is thinking rumination, which is involved in the onset and recurrence of these disorders. One of the most critical problems that are thinking rumination creates for people is their separation from reality and distance from here and now, which hurts their processing. Helping patients to put aside the past and live in now and here can be very helpful. One of the new therapies used for these disorders is Mindfulness–Based Cognitive Therapy. Mindfulness–Based Cognitive Therapy is designed to reduce the relapse of depression. In this therapy, individuals are taught to observe the thoughts and feelings without judgment by merely looking at the mental events that they are going through. In this approach, it is assumed that people learn how not to get stocked in rumination patterns. For the same reason, the purpose of the present research was to investigate the effect of mindfulness–based cognitive therapy on thinking rumination of people with depression and obsessive–compulsive disorders.

This study employed the two–group pretest–posttest quasi–experimental design. The sample consisted of 80 patients with major depressive and obsessive–compulsive disorders diagnosed according to the standards of DSM–5. The participants assigned to into experimental (20 depressive patients, 20 Obsessive–compulsive patients) and control (20 depressive patients, 20 Obsessive–compulsive patients) groups. The experimental group received eight sessions of 90–minute instruction in Mindfulness–Based Cognitive Therapy. Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) was used to test the research hypotheses. 

The results of research showed that Mindfulness–Based Cognitive Therapy reduced thinking rumination in patients suffering from major depression (F= 330.96, p<0.001) and obsessive–compulsive (F= 482.27, p<0.001) at post–test level and (F=362.32, p<0.001) in patients suffering major depression and obsessive–compulsive (F= 573.35, p<0.001) at follow–up level.

Mindfulness–Based Cognitive Therapy plays an important role in treating mental disorders and the prevention of the onset and relapse of these disorders.