Effect of Compassion-Focused Therapy on Mindfulness and Rumination in Women with HIV

Women with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) experience negative emotions. Considering the importance of these emotions and their significant impact on mental health of women with HIV, and also considering the gap of information in this regard, this study aimed to assess the effect of compassion-focused therapy on mindfulness and rumination in women with HIV.

This was a quasi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test phases, and a control group. Sixty women with HIV were selected and randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. The experimental group received nine 90-min sessions of compassion-focused therapy, held once a week. The instruments used included the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) and the Rumination-Reflection Questionnaire (RRQ). The questionnaires were filled-out by patients in both the experimental and control groups in two stages before and after the intervention.

According to the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), compassion-focused therapy significantly increased the mindfulness dimensions (observing, non-judging, non-reactivity to inner experience) in the experimental group, compared with the control group at post-test (P<0.05). No significant difference was observed between the experimental and control groups in terms of rumination-reflection.

It appears that compassion-focused therapy would be effective in increasing the mindfulness dimensions in women with HIV.