An Investigation on Irritable Bowel Syndrome Patients to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Compassion-Focused Therapy

Abstract

Background: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a gastrointestinal disease characterized by chronic abdominal pain, defecation changes, and lack of organ causes for these symptoms. The present study examined the effects of compassion-focused therapy (CFT) on depression, self-care, and quality of life (QOL) in IBS patients. Methods: This quasi-experimental study was conducted with a pretest-posttest design, experimental and control groups, and follow-up investigation. Purposive sampling was used to select all IBS patients in Bangkok, Thailand. The 40 patients were randomizes into experimental and control groups. The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck, 1996), the Self-Care Questionnaire (Lou, 1996), and the Quality of Life Scale (QOLS; Burckhardt and Anderson, 2003), were the tools that were utilized in the collection of data. The collected data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) in SPSS software. The significance level chosen for the tests was 0.05. Results: In the experimental group, CFT significantly improved depression (group*time effect: P < 0.001; group factor effect: P < 0.038), self-care behaviors (group*time effect: P = 0.001; group factor effect: P = 0.057), and QOL (group*time effect: P < 0.001; group factor effect: P = 0.043) in the posttest and follow-up stages. Throughout the length of the trial, the control group's depression levels, self-care practices, and QOL remained unchanged. Conclusion: CFT can assist patients diagnosed with IBS in terms of sadness, QOL, and self-care habits. CFT can be an effective method for lowering depression, enhancing self-care practices, and enhancing QOL. This mode of therapy can help patients with IBS by alleviating their psychological issues.

Keywords

• compassion-focused therapy
• quasi-experimental
• irritable bowel syndrome