Application of acceptance and commitment therapy in middle-aged and elderly patients with postherpetic neuralgia

Abstract

Objective To investigate the effect of acceptance and commitment therapy intervention on middle-aged and elderly patients with postherpetic neuralgia. Methods A convenient sampling method was used to select 70 middle-aged and elderly patients with postherpetic neuralgia who visited the pain department of a tertiary ClassⅢ Grade A hospital in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province from January to June 2019. They were divided into observation group and control group, 35 cases in each group. The control group continued to use conventional psychological nursing intervention, and the observation group performed acceptance commitment therapy intervention on the patients. The Chinese version of the Chronic Pain Acceptance Questionnaire-8 (CPAQ-8) , the simplified Mc Gill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ) , and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) were used to conduct questionnaire surveys before and after intervention to assess pain acceptance, pain severity, and anxiety and depression. Results Before the intervention, there were no significant differences in CPAQ-8, SF-MPQ and HADS scores between the two groups (P>0.05) . After the intervention, the CPAQ-8 score of the observation group was higher than that of the control group, and the scores of SF-MPQ and HADS were lower than those of the control group. The differences between the two groups were statistically significant (P<0.05) . Conclusions Admission commitment therapy can effectively improve the degree of pain acceptance and reduce the pain in middle-aged and elderly patients with postherpetic neuralgia, and it can improve the anxiety and depression caused by pain. It is worthy of clinical promotion. Key words: Herpes zoster; Neuralgia; Anxiety; Depression; Acceptance and commitment therapy