Effectiveness of behavioral-cognitive group therapy on depression, anxiety, and stress of patients with coronary heart disease.

An appropriate psychological intervention to promote the level of mental health of patients with a coronary heart has a great importance. The existing investigation aimed to study the effectiveness of the behavioral-cognitive group therapy on depression, anxiety, and stress of patients with coronary heart disease. The current study was quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest that used a control group. Hence, 30 of the patients with coronary heart disease in Shahid Rajaee heart center in Tehran chose to use the convenience sampling method and were put in an experimental group and a control group. Both groups were pretested by using a demographic questionnaire, and scale of depression, anxiety, and stress DASS-42. Afterwards, the experimental group was trained for eight sessions of cognitive-behavioral club therapy and the control society gained no intervention. Later, both groups were post-tested, and the acquired information were analyzed by using inferential and descriptive statistical methods accompanied by SPSS 21 software. The results indicated that the cognitive-behavioral group therapy training significantly reduced depression, anxiety, and stress in patients with coronary heart disease. What should be understood from this study is that the cognitive-behavioral group therapy training had a great positive impact on the decrease of depression, anxiety, and tension in patients with coronary heart disease, since it had an economic cost and a great acceptability by the cases, especially when it was performed in a group.