effectiveness of group metacognitive therapy in selfefficacy and defense styles in women with multiple sclerosis

Introduction: this study aims to investigate the effectiveness of group metacognitive therapy in selfefficacy and defense styles in women with multiple sclerosis (ms). materials and methods: in this clinical trial (code: irct2015091624054n1), from among all the patients suffering from multiple sclerosis, who were referred to the ms society in khorasan razavi in 2014, 30 women were selected through available sampling method and were randomly assigned to two groups: an experimental group and a control group. the experimental group received metacognitive therapy for eight weeks while the control group spent the routine process of the sessions held by the ms society. for data collection, sherer general selfefficacy scale (gse) and defense styles questionnaire (dsq) were administered in the pretest, posttest and followup test. repeatedmeasures anova with a significance level α of 0.05 were conducted for data analysis. results: the results showed that group metacognitive therapy led to a significantly higher level of selfefficacy (p<0.001) and use of mature defense mechanisms (p<0.001) compared to control group. the results maintained over onemonth and threemonth followups. conclusion: it seems that group metacognitive therapy can improve selfefficacy and increase the use of mature defense mechanisms in women with multiple sclerosis.