Effectiveness of Solution-Focused Group Therapy in Generalized Anxiety Disorder in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

Abstract

: This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of solution-focused group therapy in generalized anxiety disorder in patients with multiple sclerosis. In this semi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design and unequal control group, 40 patients with multiple sclerosis were selected randomly from the MS Society of Mashhad. They were selected through purposive sampling and randomly assigned into two treatment and control groups. Then, six training sessions were held for the treatment group based on the short-term solution-focused treatment protocol for generalized anxiety disorder. This intervention was not implemented for the control group. Participants answered a seven-item generalized anxiety inventory. Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and analysis of covariance were used to analyze the data. The results showed a significant difference (P = 0.021) between the control and treatment groups in generalized anxiety disorder. In other words, solution-focused therapy could significantly reduce generalized anxiety in the treatment group when compared to the control group.