Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Treatment Based on Lived Experiences of Social Stigma on the Mental Toughness of Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

Aim and Background: Multiple sclerosis is a demyelinating disease of the central nervous system. This disease is one of the most common neurological diseases in humans and is the most debilitating disease of young people. In this regard, the aim of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of treatment based on lived experiences of social stigma on the Mental Toughness of multiple sclerosis patients in Isfahan city. Methods and Materials: The research method was a pre-test and post-test with a control group and a one-month follow-up. The statistical population of the research was all patients with multiple sclerosis who referred to the neurologist's office in Isfahan city in 2019. The society was informed that 30 patients with MS were selected by available sampling and randomly divided into two treatment groups based on lived experiences of social stigma and the control group (15 people in each group). The subjects underwent 8 weekly 90-minute sessions. The treatment was based on the lived experiences of social stigma and the control group did not receive any treatment. The data in this research was collected by the mental toughness questionnaire (MTQ48) (Clough et al., 2007) in three stages: pre-test, post-test and follow-up and were analyzed using variance analysis with repeated measurements in SPSS software version 22. Findings: The results of mixed variance analysis with repeated measurements showed that the treatment based on the lived experiences of social stigma has created a Pnificant difference in the inter-group stage (P