Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Therapy on Anxiety and Depression Symptoms in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Bojnurd, Iran

The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness group therapy based on stress reduction on anxiety and depression in patients with MS in Bojnourd

Samples were selected by simple random sampling (n = 22) and then randomly divided into an experimental group (11 subjects in the stress awareness-based mindfulness group) and a control group (n = 11). Beck Anxiety Inventory and Beck Depression Inventory were used in the pre-test. In the next step, mindfulness based on stress reduction was administered to the experimental group for 8 sessions once a week for two hours and the control group did not receive any intervention. Then the post-test was completed for both groups and the necessary data were collected and analyzed using covariance analysis.

The findings showed that there was a significant difference between the group of mindfulness-based stress therapy and the control group in the variables of anxiety and depression.

Considering the findings, more attention should be paid to stress-reduction mindfulness intervention in order to reduce the level of anxiety and depression in MS patients.