Comparing the effectiveness of existential group psychotherapy and mindfulness group therapy on resilience and life quality in patients with hypertension

The use of existential group psychotherapy and mindfulness group therapy seems to be beneficial in improving the resilience and life quality of patients with hypertension.

The present study aimed to compare the effectiveness of existential group psychotherapy and mindfulness group therapy on resilience and life quality in patients with hypertension.

The research method was semi-experimental with a pre-test, post-test, and follow-up plan with a control group. The statistical population of this study included patients suffering from hypertension referred to Atiyeh Hospital in the second six months of 2022, and 30 of them were selected by purposive sampling and randomly assigned to 1 intervention group and 1 control group. The research tools included a demographic questionnaire, the "Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (2003), and the World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire (1989). After conducting 10 sessions of existential group psychotherapy and 10 sessions of mindfulness group therapy for the intervention groups, the data were analyzed by using the method of variance analysis with repeated measurements and in SPSS version 24 software.                                                                                                          

Results of the Bonferroni post hoc test indicate a significant difference between the averages of the experimental and control groups for resilience and life quality variables and indicate the effectiveness of existential and mindfulness therapies. These results show that existential and mindfulness therapies were effective on the variables of resilience and life quality in the experimental groups (P<0.01).

It is suggested that to increase the resilience and life quality of patients suffering from hypertension, courses of existential psychotherapy and mindfulness therapy should be held for these patients along with drug treatments.