The Effect of Solution-Focused Brief Psychotherapy on Distress Tolerance, Decision-Making Styles and Social Adjustment in M.S Patients of Sari City

Subject Areas : Journal of Excellence in counseling and psychotherapy

Farhang Fereydoni ¹ ( PhD student in Psychology, Islamic Azad University, Kish International Branch. )
Mehrdad Sabet ² ( PhD in Psychometrics, Faculty of Psychology, Islamic Azad University, Roodehen Branch, Iran )

Received: 2021-10-10 Accepted : 2021-11-17 Published : 2021-11-22

Keywords: social adjustment, Multiple Sclerosis, Distress Tolerance, decision-making styles, Solution-Focused Brief Psychotherapy,

Abstract :

Purpose: Multiple sclerosis or MS causes a decrease in positive psychological characteristics, and one of the treatment methods to improve psychological characteristics is solution-focused brief psychotherapy. As a result, the present study was conducted with the aim of determine the effect of solution-focused brief psychotherapy on distress tolerance, decision-making styles and social adjustment in M.S patients of Sari city.Methodology: The present study was a semi-experimental with pre-test and post-test design with a control group. The research population was M.S patients of member of the Multiple Sclerosis Association of Sari city in 2020 year. Number of 30 people of them were selected by stratified random sampling with using gender ratio and randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups (15 people in each group). The experimental group received 5 sessions of 40 minutes the solution-focused brief psychotherapy and the control group did not receive any training. Data were collected with using the distress tolerance scale (Simons and Gaher, 2005), decision-making styles questionnaire (Scott and Bruce, 1995) and social adjustment questionnaire (Weissman and Bothwell, 1976) and were analyzed by univariate and multivariate analysis of covariance methods in SPSS-19 software.Findings: The results showed that solution-focused brief psychotherapy led to promoted distress tolerance, increased rational decision-making style and decreased intuitive, spontaneous, avoidant and dependent decision-making styles and improved social adjustment in M.S patients (P˂0.01).Conclusion: The results indicated the effect of solution-focused brief psychotherapy on improving distress tolerance, decision-making styles and social adjustment in M.S patients. Therefore, the use of this treatment method seems necessary to improve psychological characteristics, especially distress tolerance, decision-making styles and social adjustment.

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