| Background: Cancercanchangepatients’ physicalappearanceandthereby,threatentheirpsychologicalwell-being. Thecurrent studyaimedtoevaluatetheeffectsof mindfulness-basedcognitivetherapyonthedysfunctionalbeliefsandthesocialappraisalof thepatientswithcancerandchangesinphysicalappearance. Methods: It was a pretest-posttest controlled quasi-experimental study. A convenience sample of 40 patients with skin, breast, headandneckcancerswasrecruitedfromShahidGhaziHospital,Tabriz,Iran.Thepatientshadcancer-inducedchangesinphysical appearancesuchasseverehairandeyebrowloss,mastectomyandskinlesions. Theywererandomlyallocatedtotheexperimental (20 patients) and the control groups (20 patients). Patients in the experimental group received mindfulness-based educations in eight1.5-hoursessionsheldtwiceaweekinfourconsecutiveweekswhilepatientsinthecontrolgroupreceivednoeducation.Before and one week after the study intervention, patients in both study groups completed the Jone irrational belief test and the social appraisalsubscaleof theself-talkscale. ThedatawereanalyzedbytheSPSSver. 16.0andthroughconductingtheindependent-and thepaired-sampleT-testsandthemultivariateanalysisof variance(MANOVA)atthesignificancelevelof 0.05. Results: Study findings revealed that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy significantly improved the participating patients’ demandforapproval,highself-expectation,blameproneness,frustrationreactive,emotionalirresponsibility,anxiousover-concern, problemavoidance,perfectionism,socialappraisal(P< 0.001),dependencyandhelplessnessforchange(P< 0.05). Conclusions: Mindfulness education is recommended to correct dysfunctional beliefs and improve social appraisal of patients withcancerandchangesinphysicalappearance.
Keywords: Mindfulness-BasedTherapy,IrrationalBeliefs,SocialAppraisal,Cancer |