Comparison of the effectiveness of existential, cognitive-existential, and humanistic-existential group psychotherapy on psychosomatic complaints in women with type 2 diabetes mellitus

Abstract

Background and aims: A significant amount of previous studies has confirmed the positive effect of existential, cognitive-existential, and humanistic-existential interventions on psychosocial problems with different populations. However, research on the effectiveness and comparison of the effect of these three independent variables on the problem of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus is novel. So, the purpose of this research is to study the comparison of the effectiveness of existential, cognitive-existential, and humanistic-existential group psychotherapy on psychosomatic complaints among women with type 2 diabetes mellitus.Methods: The method of the research was semi-experimental, and its experimental design includes the pretest, post-test, and two-month follow-up tests with experimental and control parallel groups. Cases of this study included women with type 2 diabetes mellitus referring to the Specialist Diabetes Clinic of Tohid Hospital in Sanandaj in the first three months of 2019. The main criterion for entry participants to research was the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes mellitus by specialists of the Diabetes Clinic of Tohid Hospital in Sanandaj. 32 subjects selected by simple random sampling method of this society and were assigned to three experimental and one control group by substituting random method. The data collected based on the scale of psychosomatic complaints Takata & Sakata (2004). After the pre-test, the experimental groups participated in 120-minute sessions for 9 weeks. Data analyzed by the statistical test of repeated measures of the General Linear Model. Results: The results of repeated measures analysis showed that the effect of the interventions in experimental groups of psychosomatic complaints was significant and stable compared to the control group (computed using alpha = 0, 05). The effect of the group humanistic-existential psychotherapy on reducing psychosomatic complaints about women with type 2 diabetes mellitus is stable and significant compared to existential and cognitive-existential psychotherapy (The mean difference is significant at the 0,05 level).Conclusion: The findings show applying humanistic-existential psychotherapy more benefits than the other two method. So, humanistic-existential group psychotherapy could be a selective therapy for reducing psychosomatic complaints about women with type 2 diabetes mellitus.