[ effects of group therapy on mental health condition in mothers of thalassemic patients]

ABSTRACT

Thalassemia is the most common hereditary chronic anemia in human. It causes terrible effects on psychological health condition of family members, especially mothers. Due to the advantages and a very few side effects of group therapy, the current study aimed at determining the effects of group therapy on mental health condition of the thalassemic patients' mothers. A clinical trial was conducted on 60 mothers of thalassemic patients in Hajar hospital of Shahrekord medical university and Seieed Al Shohada hospital in Farsan. At the beginning of the study all mothers were administered a demographic and mental health questionnaire [GHQ28] and among those who scored higher than 23, were randomly designated to the experimental and control groups. In the treatment period of the study the participants in the experimental group attended 8 weekly sessions of group therapy. Data were analyzed using ANOVA, t-test, paired t-test, and Pearson Correlation. Before the experiment there was no significant difference between the two groups of subjects in both questionnaires in all dimensions [P>0.05]. After the treatment period a significant difference was observed between the two groups in all dimensions of mental health [P<0.05]. The results also showed that there was no correlation between demographic variables and mental health conditions. The results of this study showed that group therapy has a considerable positive effect on recovery and improvement of mental health of mothers of the chronic patients, like thalassemia in all dimensions