The Effectiveness of Online Teaching of Existential Consciousness Group Therapy on Loneliness, Fatigue Impact, and Lifestyle in Home Quarantine in Hemodialysis Patients

Hemodialysis patients suffer many problems including feelings of loneliness, fatigue, and low lifestyle quality. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of online existential consciousness therapy on these patients’ loneliness, fatigue, and lifestyle.

The research method was quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest and follow-up design with a control group. The research population was all hemodialysis patients who were referred to the dialysis center of Nikan Hospital in Tehran. Using the convenience sampling method, 30 participants were selected as study samples. Research instruments for collecting data were the Rasel’s Loneliness Questionnaire (1978), the Fieck’s Fatigue Impact Questionnaire (1944), and the Corona Virus Lifestyle Scale (Ali Akbari Dehkordi, et al., 2020). For the experimental group, ten 90-minutes sessions were performed through Sky-room.

MANCOVA and ANCOVA showed that existential consciousness training reduced the feeling of loneliness in the sub-components of not having a close friend, lack of loneliness, and isolation, but was not effective in the sub-component of sociability. This intervention also reduced the fatigue in the cognitive and social components but did not affect the physical component. It was also effective on the happy lifestyle but did not affect on the healthy lifestyle.

Existential consciousness therapy was effective in reducing the loneliness feeling, fatigue impact, and lifestyle changes of hemodialysis patients during home quarantine. Therefore, this method can be used as a new therapeutic approach to reduce the loneliness and fatigue impact caused by hemodialysis and change patients' lifestyles during quarantine in medical centers and psychological services.