the effects of cognitive behavioral therapy on quality of life among patients with hepatitis b

Background and objectives: hepatitis b is associated with different physical and psychological complications. this study sought to evaluate the effects of cognitive behavioral therapy on the quality of life among patients with hepatitis b. methods: in this quasi-experimental study, 60 patients with hepatitis b were conveniently recruited from a private infectious disease clinic in birjand, iran. the patients were randomly allocated to either a control (n = 30) or an intervention (n = 30) group. patients in the intervention group received cognitive behavioral therapy in eight 45-minute sessions while their counterparts received no cognitive behavioral therapy. all patients completed the 36-item short form survey both before and after the intervention. the spss software (v. 15.0) was used to analyze the data by running the paired-sample t, independent-sample t, wilcoxon signed-rank, and mann-whitney u test at a significance level of less than 0.05. results: in the intervention group, the scores of the social functioning and general health domains of quality of life significantly decreased while the score of the emotional well-being domain significantly increased after the intervention (p < 0.05). however, the mean scores of the other domains did not change significantly (p > 0.05). moreover, in the control group, the scores of quality of life and its social functioning and general health domains significantly decreased (p < 0.05), while the scores of the other dimensions did not change significantly (p > 0.05). the groups did not significantly differ from each other respecting the pretest-posttest mean scores of the quality of life and its domains (p > 0.05). conclusions: this study suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy has no significant effect on the quality of life but significantly improves emotional well-being among patients with hepatitis b.