Comparison of the Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Compassion-Focused Therapy on the Cognitive Emotion Regulation in Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

We aimed to compare the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction and compassion-focused on the cognitive regulation of emotion in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). The research method was the semi-experimental type, with pre-test, post-test, follow-up, and experimental and control groups. The population included patients with IBS in Isfahan city; 45 of them were selected by convenience sampling method and randomly assigned to 3 groups (15 in each group). Then, the patients of one experimental group received eight sessions of 90 minutes of a mindfulness-based stress reduction program, while the other experimental group received eight sessions of 90 minutes of compassion-focused therapy. The measurement tools included the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski and Kraaij, 2002) and a short clinical interview. Research data were analyzed using variance analysis with repeated measures on one factor (mixed design). Both intervention methods were equally effective in changing the cognitive regulation of adaptive emotion mean scores (<0.01), but the effect of compassion-focused therapy on improving the mean scores of cognitive regulation of adaptive emotion was more than mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy (<0.05). It was concluded that both intervention methods can be used as complementary treatment for patients with IBS.