Comparing the Effectiveness of Compassion Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Its Reprocessing on Coping Self-efficacy of Patients Recovered From COVID-19

Coping self–efficacy enables people to express more adaptive coping behaviors by regulating their emotions against environmental and social stress. Thus, people will use more coping skills and be less vulnerable to stress when facing problems and challenging situations over time. Studies emphasize providing special care for the recovered people from COVID–19 due to the physical and psychological damage caused by the disease. Compassion therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy are the interventions improving the psychological state in critical situations. Due to the significant number of people who recovered from coronavirus in Iran and its chronic physiological and psychological consequences, and the essential role of coping self–efficacy on the person for months after recovery, the present study aims to compare the effects of compassion therapy and EMDR on the coping self–efficacy of patients recovered from the coronavirus.

The present study was quasi–experimental with a pretest–posttest and a 2–month follow–up design with a control group. The study's statistical population included all the patients who recovered from coronavirus and were discharged from the ICUs of Shohaday–e Ashayer and Social Security hospitals in Khoramabad City, Iran, from November to the end of December 2020. The inclusion criteria included an age range of 20 to 40 years, minimum education of diploma, minimum stay of 10 days in the ICU, more than 1 month passed since the patient's discharge, not taking psychotropic or psychiatric drugs, informed consent to participate in the study, and obtaining a score lower than the mean in the Coping Self–Efficacy Questionnaire (Chesney et al., 2006). In this study, 45 people were included using a purposeful sampling method. They were randomly divided into three groups (two experimental groups and one control group, with 15 people in each group). The first intervention group received 8 sessions of compassion therapy intervention, and the second intervention group received 5 sessions of EMDR therapy intervention. The control group was placed on the intervention waiting list. The data collection tools included a demographic information questionnaire and a Coping Self–Efficacy Questionnaire (Chesney et al., 2006) used in three stages: pretest, posttest, and follow–up. Finally, the obtained data were analyzed using descriptive (mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics (analysis of variance with repeated measurements and Bonferroni post hoc test) in SPSS–25 software. The significance level of the tests was considered at 0.05.

The results showed significant effects of time, group, and the interaction of time and group on the coping self–efficacy variable (p<0.001). The mean scores of coping self–efficacy in the compassion therapy group (p=0.010) and EMDR (p<0.001) were significantly higher than the control group. However, there was no significant difference between the experimental groups (p=0.825). In both experimental groups, a significant difference was observed in the mean scores of coping self–efficacy between the pretest and posttest (p<0.001) and between the pretest and follow–up (p<0.001). However, no significant difference was observed between the posttest and the follow–up, indicating the persistence of the effectiveness of the interventions in the follow–up phase (p=0.496).

According to the findings, no significant difference was found between the effects of compassion therapy and EMDR. Therefore, they can be used as effective interventions to increase coping self–efficacy and improve the mental health of patients recovered from coronavirus.