Volume 15 - Articles-1404                   MEJDS (2025) 15: 50 | Back to browse issues page

Ethics code: IR.BUMS.REC.1401.034

XML Persian Abstract Print

Download citation:
BibTeX | RIS | EndNote | Medlars | ProCite | Reference Manager | RefWorks
Send citation to:
Asif Mehr S, Bahrainian A M, Shahabizadeh F. Determining the Effect of Dialectical Group Therapy on the Improvement of Psychological Symptoms and the Quality of Life of Hypertensive Patients. MEJDS 2025; 15 (0) :50-50
URL: http://jdisabilstud.org/article-1-3158-en.html
Determining the Effect of Dialectical Group Therapy on the Improvement of Psychological Symptoms and the Quality of Life of Hypertensive Patients
Safora Asif Mehr1 , Abdul Majid Bahrainian *2 , Fatima Shahabizadeh3
1- PhD Student, Educational Psychology Department, Birjand Islamic Azad University, Birjand, Iran
2- Professor, Department of Psychology, Shahid Beheshti University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
3- Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Birjand Islamic Azad University, Birjand, Iran
Abstract:   (1418 Views)

Abstract
Background & Objectives: Dialectical behavior therapy is an evidence-based psychotherapy that was introduced as an attempt to treat personality disorders and interpersonal conflicts. There is evidence that dialectical behavior therapy can be useful in treating mood disorders, suicidal thoughts, as well as changing behavioral patterns such as self-harm and substance use. Blood pressure is one of the vital signs of a person's health. High blood pressure can lead to various health issues, and individuals may not live more than a few years. High blood pressure can cause malfunctions in people or even be associated with cardiovascular diseases. This issue is one of the health treatment problems in industrialized and developing countries. Problems such as anxiety and depression, and in the long term, these psychological problems become mental problems and reduce the person's quality of life. Therefore, it is very necessary to investigate treatments that can affect the psychological issues of people with high blood pressure, along with medical treatments. The present study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of dialectical group therapy on improving psychological symptoms and quality of life of patients with hypertension.
Methods: The present study was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest and posttest design and a control group. The statistical population of the study consisted of all patients with hypertension referring to the Zahedan City Health Center, Iran. Out of 87 eligible volunteer hypertensive patients, 30 were randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups (15 people in each group) by purposive sampling. The instruments used were the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck et al., 1960), the Beck Anxiety Inventory (Beck and Steer, 1990), the World Health Organization Quality of Life Inventory (World Health Organization, 1996), and the Dialectical Behavior Therapy Protocol (Linehan, 1993). Experts confirmed the validity of the questionnaire, and the Cronbach alpha was used to examine the reliability, yielding values of 0.86, 0.92, and 0.77, respectively. The experimental group received dialectical behavior therapy for 90 minutes for 8 weeks (one session per week) according to the following content. The validity of the program content was examined using reliable sources of similar research and was approved by experts in the field of psychology for this research project. A 1-way analysis of covariance test was used to analyze the results. Data analysis was performed in SPSS version 22 software, and a significance level of 0.05 was considered.
Results: Descriptive statistics showed that the scores of the subjects in the experimental group decreased compared to the control group in both depression and anxiety variables, and increased in the quality of life variable. However, no significant change was observed in the control group. The results of multivariate covariance analysis showed that dialectical behavior therapy has a significant effect on at least one of the variables of depression and anxiety in the experimental group (P≤0.001). The eta coefficient was 0.949. Dialectical behavior therapy has reduced depression and anxiety in people with high blood pressure; more precisely, dialectical behavior therapy has played a role in reducing depression by 96.2% and in reducing anxiety by 93.7%. (P≤0.001). The results of univariate covariance analysis showed that dialectical behavior therapy has a significant effect on the quality of life variable in the experimental group (P≤0.001). The eta coefficient was 0.914. The difference in the mean of posttests between the experimental and control groups in the quality of life variable is significant (P≤0.001). Therefore, it can be said that dialectical behavior therapy has increased the quality of life in people with high blood pressure. To be more precise, dialectical behavior therapy contributed 91.4% to improving quality of life.
Conclusion: According to the results of the study, dialectical group therapy can be used to reduce psychological symptoms (depression and anxiety) and increase the quality of life of patients with hypertension.

Keywords: Dialectical therapeutic behavior, Depression, Anxiety, Quality of life
Full-Text [PDF 326 kb]   (26 Downloads)    
Type of Study: Original Research Article | Subject: Psychology
References
1. Zhou B, Bentham J, Di Cesare M, Bixby H, Danaei G, Cowan MJ, et al. Worldwide trends in blood pressure from 1975 to 2015: a pooled analysis of 1479 population-based measurement studies with 19·1 million participants. The Lancet. 2017;389(10064):37–55. [DOI]
2. O'Brien E. Blood pressure measurement is changing! Heart. 2001;85(1):3–5. [DOI]
3. Miceli M, Castelfranchi C. Expectancy and emotion. Oxford University Press; 2014.
4. Khodaparast S, Farajpour Pirbasti M, Bakhshalipour V, Kalashi M. The relationship between motivational factors of sports participation with the level of general health and quality of life in inactive elderly. Journal of Health and Care. 2021;23(3):213–22. [Persian] [DOI]
5. Surmai M, Duff E. Cognitive behavioural therapy: a strategy to address pandemic-induced anxiety. J Nurs Pract. 2022;18(1):36–9. [DOI]
6. De Zwart PL, Jeronimus BF, De Jonge P. Empirical evidence for definitions of episode, remission, recovery, relapse and recurrence in depression: a systematic review. Epidemiol Psychiatr Sci. 2019;28(5):544–62. [DOI]
7. Lindert J, Von Ehrenstein OS, Grashow R, Gal G, Braehler E, Weisskopf MG. Sexual and physical abuse in childhood is associated with depression and anxiety over the life course: systematic review and meta-analysis. Int J Public Health. 2014;59(2):359–72. [DOI]
8. World Health Organization. WHOQOL: measuring quality of life [Internet]. World Health Organization; 2020.
9. Van Der Krieke L, Blaauw FJ, Emerencia AC, Schenk HM, Slaets JPJ, Bos EH, et al. Temporal dynamics of health and well-being: a crowdsourcing approach to momentary assessments and automated generation of personalized feedback. Psychosom Med. 2017;79(2):213–23. [DOI]
10. Rubio-Guerra AF, Rodriguez-Lopez L, Vargas-Ayala G, Huerta-Ramirez S, Serna DC, Lozano-Nuevo JJ. Depression increases the risk for uncontrolled hypertension. Exp Clin Cardiol. 2013;18(1):10–2.
11. McMain SF, Links PS, Gnam WH, Guimond T, Cardish RJ, Korman L, et al. A randomized trial of dialectical behavior therapy versus general psychiatric management for borderline personality disorder. Am J Psychiatry. 2009;166(12):1365–74. [DOI]
12. Harned MS, Rizvi SL, Linehan MM. Impact of co-occurring posttraumatic stress disorder on suicidal women with borderline personality disorder. Am J Psychiatry. 2010;167(10):1210–7. [DOI]
13. Zamani N, Habibi M, Darvishi M. To compare the effectiveness of dialectical behavior therapy and cognitive behavioral group therapy in reducing depression in mothers of children with disabilities. J Arak Univ Med Sci. 2015;18(1):32–42. [Persian] [DOI]
14. Afsar N, Kulsoom B. Stress, anxiety, and depression among medical students in a multiethnic setting. Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat. 2015;11:1713–22. [DOI]
15. Meitei KT, Singh HS. Prevalence of depression among Indian population. Online Journal of Health Allied Sciences. 2019;18(4):12. [DOI]
16. Beck AT, Steer RA, Brown GK. Manual for the Beck Depression Inventory-II. San Antonio: Psychological Corporation; 1996.
17. Beck AT, Epstein N, Brown G, Steer RA. An inventory for measuring clinical anxiety: Psychometric properties. J Consult Clin Psychol. 1988;56(6):893–7. [DOI]
18. Rajabi Gh, Karju Kasmai S. Psychometric properties of a Persian language version of the beck depression inventory second edition. Educational Measurement. 2013;3(10):139–58. [Persian] [Article]
19. Beck AT, Steer RA. Manual for the Beck Anxiety Inventory. San Antonio: Psychological Corporation; 1990.
20. Fata L, Birashk B, Atefvahid MK, Dabson KS. Meaning assignment structure/schema, emotional states and cognitive processing of emotional information: comparing two conceptual frameworks. Iranian Journal of Psychiatry & Clinical Psychology. 2005;11(3):312–26. [Persian] [Article]
21. World Health Organization. WHOQOL-BREF. introduction, administration, scoring and generic version of the assessment: field trial version [Internet]. WHO, Geneva; 1996.
22. Nejat S, Montazeri A, Holakouie Naieni K, Mohammad K, Majdzadeh SR. The world health organization quality of Life (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaire: Translation and validation study of the Iranian version. Journal of School of Public Health and Institute of Public Health Research. 2006:4(4):1–12. [Persian] [Article]
23. Skevington SM, Lotfy M, O'Connell KA. The world health organization's WHOQOL-BREF quality of life assessment: psychometric properties and results of the international field trial. A Report from the WHOQOL group. Qual Life Res. 2004;13(2):299–310. [DOI]
24. Nasiri Ghale-Seri SN, Heydari S, Khalili Gh, Mousavi SM. Meta-analysis of the research conducted in the field of dialectical behavior therapy on the reduction of symptoms in borderline personality disorder. In: The 5th international conference on new research achievements in social sciences and Educational Sciences and Psychology [Internet]. Tehran; 2018. [Persian]
25. Mousavi SM, Aghaei A. Studying the effectiveness of dialectical behavior therapy on body image and depression of women with postpartum depression living in Isfahan city, Iran. Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies Volume. 2022;12:46. [Persian] [Article]
26. Warlick CA, Poquiz J, Huffman JM, DeLong L, Moffitt-Carney K, Leonard J, et al. Effectiveness of a brief dialectical behavior therapy intensive-outpatient community health program. Psychotherapy (Chic). 2022;59(1):125–32. [DOI]
27. Wang SB, Wang YY, Zhang QE, Wu SL, Ng CH, Ungvari GS, et al. Cognitive behavioral therapy for post-stroke depression: a meta-analysis. J Affect Disord. 2018;235:589–96. [DOI]
Add your comments about this article : Your username or Email:
CAPTCHA
Send email to the article author

Rights and permissions
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

© 2025 CC BY-NC 4.0 | Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Designed & Developed by : Yektaweb