Effectiveness of Solution-Focused Therapy in Mental Health and Hopefulness Among Patients with Cardiovascular Diseases

Psychological factors possibly play a role in the process of cardiovascular disease and interact with biological agents to affect cardiovascular disease. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of solution-focused therapy in mental health and hopefulness among patients with cardiovascular diseases.

This was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design, follow-up, and control group. The statistical population of this study included all cardiovascular patients referring to Isfahan Cardiovascular Research Center, Isfahan, Iran, within January to March 2018 with a history of heart attack or open-heart surgery in the last month. In this study, 30 patients with cardiovascular diseases willing to participate in the study were selected through convenience sampling. The patients met the study inclusion criteria and were randomly assigned to experimental (n=15) and control (n=15) groups. The data were collected by Snyderchr('39')s Hopefulness Scale and public health questionnaire and analyzed by repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) and analysis of covariance in SPSS software (version 22).

The results of the present study indicated that the results of ANOVA was significant for within-group factor (i.e., time) and only for physical symptom variables among between-group factors. These results indicated that without considering the group influence, only the time effect was significant. However, the interaction between group and time was also significant (F=12.84; P<0.0001).

Overall, the findings of this study showed that solution-focused therapy was effective in the mental health and hopefulness of patients with cardiovascular diseases and can be used in treatment centers to improve the status of patients with cardiovascular diseases