Comparison of the effect of mentalization-based therapy and emotion-regulated therapy based on the Gross process model on psychological well-being and quality of work-life of nurses in intensive care units

This study was conducted to examine the effect of mentalization-based therapy and emotion-regulated therapy based on the Gross process model on psychological well-being and quality of work-life of nurses in intensive care units.

Improving nurses' well-being and satisfaction with their quality of work-life improves the nurse-patient relationship and hospitals' performance from an organizational point of view. It is necessary to provide psychological therapeutic interventions to this crucial group of health care providers.

This study was an experimental  study (pre-test post-test with control group) in which 45 nurses working in intensive care units of selected Tehran hospitals, Iran, were selected by the convenience sampling method, and assigned to two intervention groups and one control group (15 nurses in each group). Reef's short-term psychological well-being and Walton's 32-item quality of work-life were used to measure dependent variables of the study. Then, mentalization-based therapy group received intervention in 8 sessions of 90 minutes as one session per week; and the treatment group based on emotion regulated therapy based on the Gross process model received the intervention in 8 sessions of 90 minutes, one session per week based on the protocol. No intervention was implemented for the control group. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics in SPSS software.

  Before the intervention, there were the highest scores for quality of work-life in the control group. At the end of the study and after the intervention, the scores of quality of work-life increased in all three groups, and no statistical significant difference was found between the groups. Before the intervention, the highest scores for psychological well-being was observed in the mentalization-based therapy group. (85.86±6.56), and after the intervention, although the psychological well-being scores of both interventions groups were higher than that of control group, but this diferrence was not statistically significant.

Based on the findings of this study, it seems that training sessions of mentalization-based therapy and emotion-regulated therapy based on the Gross process model improve the quality of work-life in nurses working in intensive care units, but the improvement was not statistically significant.