Comparison of the effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Relaxation on Distress Tolerance in females with Multiple Sclerosis (MS)

The present study aims to compare the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction and relaxation on distress tolerance in females with Multiple Sclerosis )MS(. This is a quasi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test design with the control group. The statistical population included all patients with MS who were referred to the MS Association of Mazandaran and had a medical record between 2019 and 2020 years. 45 females have been selected by purposive sampling method and randomly were assigned to three groups (control and two experimental groups). Then, the subjects of the first and second experimental groups received mindfulness-based stress reduction and relaxation in 8 sessions, respectively. The Distress Tolerance Scale (Simons & Gaher,2005) was used before and after education for all three groups. The findings of the analysis of Covariance showed that mindfulness-based stress reduction  (F=6.09, p<0.05) and relaxation (F=16.03, p<0/05)  have led to an improvement in the distress tolerance of females with MS. The results of the  LSD test have shown that mindfulness-based stress reduction has been more impact on distress tolerance than relaxation. According to the findings of the present study, in the field of treatment and counseling of patients with MS, mindfulness-based stress reduction seems to be very effective and promising.