Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) on anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in patients with HIV/ AIDS

Introduction: mindfulness plays an important role in improving psychological functions of chronic patients. therefore the aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction (mbsr) on the symptoms of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress in patients with hiv/ aids.method: this study was an experimental design with a pre-test, post-test along with a follow-up group. by using convenience sampling, 30 hiv/ aids patients were selected. they were randomly assigned into two groups of experiment and control. the experimental group underwent mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy within two months. the scores of beck depression inventory-ii (bdi-ii) , beck anxiety inventory (bai) and impact of event scale - revised (ies-r), were collected from the two groups in pre-test, post-test and in a two-month follow up period. data were analyzed using mixed analysis of variance test.results: the results in the post-test and follow up indicated that mbsr in the experimental group, significantly reduced the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (p˂0.05), anxiety (p˂0.05) and depression (p˂0.05) in hiv/ aids patients.conclusion: the results of this study revealed the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction on psychological functions in patients with hiv. according to these results and the mechanism of its effectiveness, this therapy can have good therapeutic implications.