Evaluating the Effectiveness of Positive Psychotherapy and MBCT Method on Increasing Life Expectancy and Reducing Depression in Patients with Huntington’s Chorea Disease

The present study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of positive psychotherapy and the MBCT method on increasing life expectancy and reducing depression in patients with Huntington’s chorea disease.

The present study was applied with an experimental design and pre-test, post-test, and follow-up with a comparison group. The present study’s statistical population consisted of 30 people with Huntington’s chorea disease referred to Rasoul Akram Hospital in Tehran in 2020. Due to the possibility of dropout in samples, all patients with Huntington’s chorea disease were chosen to take part in the research. Next, the patients were randomly divided into positive psychotherapy (n = 10), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) (n = 10) and control (n = 10) groups. Schneider's life expectancy scale (Schneider et al. (1991) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) were used to collect data. Also, MANCOVA and LSD post hoc tests and SPSS-24 software were utilized for analyzing the data at a significance level of = 0.05. The findings indicated that positive psychotherapy effectively affects life expectancy and depression in patients with Huntington’s chorea disease and reduces depression and a significant enhancement (P <0.05) in life expectancy in these patients. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) effectively reduces the life expectancy and depression of patients with Huntington’s chorea disease. It reduces depression and a significant enhancement (P <0.05) in life expectancy in Huntington’s chorea disease patients.