Introduction
Psychosomatic disorders are a set of disorders that are created due to mental pressure, tension, and chronic stress. These disorders occur in different forms in any person at any age and situation, but it is usually more common in people aged 20-45 years. The patients feel unpleasant pains in the body, which are called psychosomatic pains. Migraine, as the most common psychosomatic pain, occurs in the form of recurring, throbbing, and often one-sided headache attacks for 4-72 hours. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), this disorder is one of the 20 debilitating disorders; its one-year prevalence is more than 10%, about 15% for women and 6% for men. The causes of migraine can be psychological factors; the accurate identification of the effect of these factors on migraine can help improve the physical, mental and social health of affected people.
Cognitive emotion regulation strategies is a set of mental and conscious methods that people use to maintain and control emotions and increase the experience or expression of their feelings in order to achieve goals. Emotion-regulatory behavior manifests externally before the occurrence of emotion and plays an important role in the adaptation of individuals to stressful events. According to Garnefski et al., nine cognitive emotion regulation strategies are divided into two groups of maladaptive strategies (self-blame, rumination, catastrophizing, and blaming others) and adaptive strategies (acceptance, positive refocusing, refocusing on planning, putting into perspective, and positive reappraisal). Due to the fact that people with migraines are often anxious and that the onset of headaches in them is often associated with the experience of negative emotional states such as anger, it seems that these people use less positive strategies for regulating their emotions. Positive emotion regulation using effective strategies such as re-reappraisal can increase the positive perception of pain, reduce its severity, and subsequently improve the quality of life. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is a standard technique that combines mindfulness training, patient education, and group support. It is an eight-week evidence-based program that is used to help treat people with stress, anxiety, depression, and pain.
Migraine can disrupt women’s performance in life and need to be addressed. if left untreated, it can affect their efficiency and prevent them from fulfilling their duties and responsibilities which can cause problems for the family members and endanger the general health of the society. Therefore, this study aims to examine whether MBCT is effective in the cognitive emotion regulation, migraine severity, and the stress coping styles of women with migraine.
Methods
This is a quasi-experimental study. The study population consisted of all women suffering from migraine who referred to neurologists in Khorramabad city in 2022. Of these, 32 were selected by a convenience sampling method and randomly divided into two groups of intervention (n=16) and control (n=16). To collect data, the cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire, Najarian’s psychosomatic symptoms of migraine questionnaire, and the stress coping styles questionnaire of Billings and Moss (1981) were used.
Results
According to the results in
Table 1, MBCT had a significant effect on at least one of the variables (F=14.406, P<0.01) in woman with migraine.
Therefore, the null hypothesis is rejected and the research hypothesis is confirmed. Based on the results, MBCT was effective in increasing the cognitive emotion regulation ability, reducing the severity of migraine symptoms, and improving stress coping styles of women with migraine.
Conclusion
The results of this study showed that the MBCT had a significant effect on cognitive emotion regulation, psychosomatic symptoms severity of migraine, and stress coping styles in women with migraine. MBCT had an effect in these women through two processes, avoiding unpleasant emotions and symptoms and accepting the experience of negative emotions. It prevents women to avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings and help them tolerate them.
Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Lorestan University of Medical Sciences (Code: IR.LUMS.REC.1401.172), and was registered at Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (Code: IRCT20221218056852N1).
Funding
This research financially supported by Nasser Khosrow Institute of Higher Education.
Authors contributions
Conceptualizatio, Research, review, Editing and Finalization: Ameneh Shahverdi; Supervision: Maboud Omidi and Maryam Mousavinik.
Conflicts of interest
The authors declared no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the neurologists for referring the women with migraine to participate in the study, and the participants for corporation in the study.
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