Effectiveness of Compassion-Focused Therapy on Psychological Well-Being, Life Expectancy, and Psychological Flexibility in People with HIV

Background:  HIV causes a debilitating disease to affect the involved patientchr('39')s life. Therefore, investigate and introduce of effective interventions to improve the status of these patients is one of the necessities of modern research. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of compassion-focused therapy on enhancing psychological well-being, life hope, and psychological flexibility in HIV-infected patients. Methods: This quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest and follow-up design and a control group included all patients with an active file in the Tehran Blood Transfusion Organization who were eligible according to inclusion criteria. Thirty-four cases selected by purposive sampling and randomly assigned into two groups of compassion-focused therapy (N=17) and control (N=17). During the research process, 2 subjects from the experiment group and 2 subjects from the control group were removed. Participants were assessed before, after, and three months after the intervention with the Ryff Psychological Well-being Questionnaire, Schneiderchr('39')s Hope Scale, and Bondchr('39')s Psychological Flexibility Questionnaire. Data were analyzed (repeated measures ANOVA) in SPSS 20 software. Results: Findings showed that psychological well-being (F=112.83, p=0.001) life hope (F=117.02, p=0.001), and psychological flexibility (F=65.61, p=0.001) significantly increased in compassion-focused therapy group comparing control group (P>0.001). Conclusion: Therefore, it can be concluded that compassion-focused therapy is effective in increasing psychological well-being, life hope, and psychological flexibility in HIV-infected patients.