The effect of group therapy on depression and anxiety levels of the patients with myocardial infarction

Abstract

Introduction: Since about 65% of the patients with myocardial infarction (MI) experience psychological and mental disorders such as depression and anxiety that delay their return to work, lower their quality of life and enhance their risk of death, treatment of these reactions can speed up their recovery and make their life span longer. This study tried to define and compare mean depression and anxiety scores in patients before and after group therapy in both groups of study and control.

Methods: This was a clinical experiment on 22 patients with MI, hospitalized in CCUs of medical university hospitals for the first time, being discharged and randomly selected as study and control groups. The data were collected by Beck depression scale and Kattle anxiety scale. In order to access the results, paired t test, ANOVA with reobservations and student t test were used in SPSS software

Results: The findings showed that depression and anxiety levels in patients with MI decreased significantly in study group after group therapy sessions and a month after that compared with control group and before intervention.

Conclusion: Regarding the continuous effect of group therapy on depression and anxiety levels of the patients, application of this method seems essential in all stages of prevention and treatment of the patients with MI