The effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy on mental toughness and life expectancy of patients with multiple sclerosis

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is one of the most common chronic diseases creating major psychological challenges. Hence, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) on mental toughness and life expectancy of MS patients. Methods: The design of this quasi-experimental study has been with pre-test, post-test and follow-up with control group that was performed in Zahedan MS community, Iran, from September to November 2016. The sample of the study was selected voluntarily from 30 MS patients which were randomly divided into two experimental and control groups. Among 200 patients, 80 patients had the required qualifications to participate in the study and 38 patients volunteered to enter the study. At last, only 30 patients were selected and put randomly into two experimental and control group. The experimental group received treatment in 8 weekly sessions (90 to 120-minute-long sessions with the classroom task and homework and group discussion) but the control group did not go under such treatment. The research instrument being used in this study was Halajian life expectancy questionnaire and mental toughness questionnaire (MTQ-48). Results: For the groups to be homogeneous in age and the level of education, T-test and chi-squared test were used respectively, which did not show a meaningful difference between experimental and control group. The analysis of covariance showed that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) group has resulted in meaningful increase in mental toughness and life expectancy of patients. The results showed the average of mental toughness to be 1.05 in for the experimental group in the pre-test, 1.24 in the post-test, 1.21 in the follow-up and the average of life expectancy 4.56 before treatment, 7.20 after treatment and 7.01 in the follow-up (P