Introduction: Generalized anxiety disorder causes psychological, cognitive, communication and social processes of people to face serious damage and reduces their self-efficacy. But does mindfulness-based cognitive therapy help improve psychological distress and self-efficacy in women with generalized anxiety disorder? This research was conducted with the aim of the effectiveness of cognitive therapy based on mindfulness on psychological distress and self-efficacy of women with generalized anxiety disorder.
Method: In this research, a semi-experimental method and a pre-test and post-test design with a control group were used. The statistical population of this research was made up of women suffering from generalized anxiety referring to the counseling centers of the 1st district of Tehran. From this community, 40 people were randomly selected and randomly replaced in the experimental and control groups. The implementation method was as follows: after the pre-test of psychological distress and self-efficacy, cognitive therapy based on mindfulness was implemented for women in the experimental group, and the post-test was performed for both groups. The research findings were analyzed using covariance.
Results: The findings showed that the average psychological distress and self-efficacy of women in the experimental group decreased and increased respectively in the post-test compared to the pre-test. The result of covariance analysis showed that after removing the pre-test effect, the mean post-test scores of the two groups had a statistically significant difference (p<0.001).
Conclusion: This study shows that cognitive therapy based on mindfulness can be used for psychological distress and self-efficacy of women with generalized anxiety disorder.