Comparison of the Effectiveness of Emotion-Focused Therapy and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy on Coping Strategies and Pain Catastrophizing in Patients with Pain Disorder

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of emotion-focused therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy on pain coping strategies and pain catastrophizing in patients with pain disorder. Method: The research method was a quasi-experimental with pretest-posttest design and a control group and a two-month follow-up. The statistical population of the study included all women with psychosomatic problems and pain who referred to Manoushan and Behsa counseling centers in Tehran. The sample size included 60 patients (three groups of 20). The research instruments included the Rosenstileand Keefe (1983) Pain Coping Strategies Questionnaire and the Bishop and Pivik (1995) Pain CatastropheScale. The emotion-focused experimental group received 12 training sessions and the cognitive-behavioral experimental group received 10 sessions training, but the control group did not receive any intervention during the study. Results: The results of mixed variance analysis and Benferroni pairwise comparison test showed that both emotion-focused therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy have significant impact on the components of pain reinterpretation, pain catastrophizing, behavioral activity, and coping efficiency (P <0.05), but they do not have significant effect on the components of return attention, ignoring pain, prayer and hope, and self-talking (P <0.05). The results also showed that both treatments have significant effect on pain catastrophizing (P<0.05). Also, no significant difference was observed between the two experimental groups (P <0.05). Conclusion: Therefore, the results of the present study show that emotion-focused therapy, like cognitive-behavioral therapy, can be used for patients with pain disorders and improve their cognitive factors.