Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased psychological distress and impacted diagnosis and treatment of noncommunicable diseases. This study aimed to examine the comparative effectiveness of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) on anxiety and quality of life in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) during COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods
A total of forty-five participants who met criteria for a current episode of CAD chosen by convenience sampling method from Tehran city were randomly assigned to a 9-week/60-min EFT (n = 15) group therapy, 5-week/20-min tDCS (n = 15) experimental group and one control group (n = 15). They were assessed at pre-treatment, post-group, and 3-month follow-up. The study subjects completed the self-reported questionnaires, Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL).
Results
Repeated measures analysis of variance, ANOVA, was used to measure inferential statistics. There were significant improvements in Anxiety and Quality of Life scores in both EFT and tDCS groups over the post and follow-up period (P > 0.05). However, difference was found when EFT had a greater effect on Anxiety and Quality of Life.
Conclusions
These results showed EFT and tDCS have effective interventions in reducing anxiety and improving the quality of life of CAD patients, but improvements with EFT were greater than those with tDCS.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.