The Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Therapy on Cognitive Inflexibility and Psychological Distress of Psychiatric Veterans’ Spouses

Among the stressors, none may be as powerful and pervasive as war. In addition to the physical and psychological damage to warriors, war also puts their families at risk.Consequently, the current study was done to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy on cognitive inflexibility and psychological distress in Veterans spouses with 25 to 50 percent of psychiatric problems. The current study was done with a quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test and two-month follow-up with a control group from all spouses of 25 to 50% of psychiatric veterans of Neishabour city. Thirty people were selected using the purposive sampling method and randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. The research instruments included Dennis and Vander Wal's Cognitive Flexibility Inventory (CFI) and Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K-10) and Segal, Williams, and Teisdell's (2002) Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. The experimental group received 8 sessions of mindfulness training and the control group was placed on the waiting list. Data were analyzed by SPSS software through a covariance analysis test. The results of the analysis of variance revealed that the mean of the experimental group on cognitive inflexibility has increased significantly compared to the control group. Based on the F test, the variances between the two groups are equal (p <0.05). The results of the analysis of variance show that the mean psychological distress of the experimental group decreased significantly compared to the control group. Mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy is an effective treatment program to reduce psychological distress and improve the psychological flexibility of veterans' spouses. So, to increase the quality of life of veterans' spouses and improve the health of veterans' families, it is necessary to use the intervention program of mindfulness-based stress reduction.