The Effectiveness of Hope Therapy on Stress Management and Mental Health of Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

The current research was conducted with the aim of the effectiveness of hope therapy on stress management and mental health of multiple sclerosis patients in Tehran in 1401. The current research method is semi-experimental and a pre-test-post-test plan with a control group was used to collect data. The statistical population of the study was made up of 21,000 patients who are members of the MS community in Tehran, and among them, 54 people were selected by available sampling method and randomly assigned to the experimental group (29 people) and the control group (25 people). The experimental group of hope therapy was trained for 8 sessions of 90 minutes and the control group remained on the waiting list. The tools used in the present study included Cohen's perceived stress (1983) and Goldberg's mental health (1972), which were used in two stages, pre-test and post-test. The analysis of the information obtained from the implementation of the questionnaire was done through the SPSS24 software in two descriptive and inferential sections (analysis of covariance). The findings showed that hope therapy improved stress management in patients with MS. Also, the results showed that hope therapy improved mental health and its components in patients with MS. Therefore, it seems that hope therapy can reduce stress and provide effective techniques to improve mental health in patients with MS.