Background: According to the World Health Organization (WHO) report released in 2000, about 121 million people worldwide suffer from depression. The major depressive disorder (MDD) among multiple sclerosis (MS) patients is one of the most common mood disorders experienced during life. MS patients who simultaneously suffer from depression have reported more severe symptoms of disease and slower adaptation to new conditions, which ultimately increase the cost of treatment. Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of progressive muscle relaxation therapy (PMRT) as an adjunctive therapy for reducing level of depression for MS patients. Materials and Methods: This research had the randomized controlled trial design with pre and posttest. Thirty female patients based on criteria of MS and MDD disease, were selected from the MS Society of Shiraz, Iran. Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) was administered at pre and posttest. The participants were randomly allocated to two groups (experimental and control). Twelve sessions of PMRT using Bernstein and Borkovec's method were held for the experimental group. Levin's test, covariance and ANOVA with repeated measures were used for data analysis. Results: Experimental and control groups were compared before and after treatment. Analysis of covariance showed that seven levels of depression decreased in the experimental group and analysis of repeated measure showed that 49% of the changes were related to PMRT. Conclusion: According to the results, PMRT is effective in reducing depression. This therapy enables patients to reach relaxation quickly, and thus can cope with depression reactions effectively.Keywords: Depression; Multiple Sclerosis; Muscle Relaxation; Therapy Copyright © 2015, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited.
BackgroundMultiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease with a variable course. This disease usually occurs with reversible periods of neurological disability during the third and fourth decades of life and finally, in the sixth or seventh decades of life, this disease becomes an irreversible neurological disorder and permanent disability (1). MS disease is demarcated with inflammation and destruction of white matter of the brain and spinal cord and its replacement with gliotic tissue (2). The etiology of disease this unknown, however, strong evidence for irreversible neurological disability in MS patients indicates that MS disease is an autoimmune disease against central nervous system myelin or neuron degeneration (3). MS disease has been reported 1.8 times more in females than males and has a profound effect on the personal lives of individuals (4). One million people in the world suffer from MS that is comorbid with psychiatric dis...
