Comparing the Effectiveness of Reality Therapy and Positive Psychotherapy on Sleep Quality in Patients With Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is one of the most common neurological diseases that severely affects the patients‘ quality of sleep.

This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of reality therapy and positive psychotherapy on sleep quality in women with MS.

The research method was quasi-experimental with a pre-test, post-test design and a control group. The study population included all women with MS referred to the Guilan MS Association in the summer and fall of 2019 who were selected by purposive sampling method. They were randomly assigned in three groups of 15 people for reality therapy training, positive psychotherapy, and control group. Both experimental groups received eight 90-minute sessions of psychotherapy interventions, but the control group received no training. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was used to collect data. Data analysis was performed by Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) and Bonferroni post hoc test in SPSS version 22.

Both reality therapy and positive psychotherapy significantly improved sleep quality in women with MS (P<0.01). Also, based on the results, the sleep quality of the reality therapy group showed a greater and more significant improvement compared to the positive treatment (F=19.43, P<0.01).

According to the obtained results, both methods have good practical capabilities for clinical interventions to improve sleep quality in patients with MS. Reality therapy is more effective than positive psychotherapy on the quality of sleep in women with MS.