MINDFULNESS-BASED COGNITIVE THERAPY ON ANXIETY OF PREGNANT WOMEN DURING THE COVID-19 OUTBREAK IN TEHRAN, IRAN

Introduction. In the current study the mindfulness-based cognitive therapy on anxiety of pregnant women during the coronavirus outbreak were evaluated.
Materials and methods. A randomized controlled clinical trial was carried out among 72
pregnant women who presented at gynecology clinics in hospitals, Tehran, Iran, for prenatal care during January and April2019. The 17-item short form of Pregnancy Related Anxiety Questionnaire developed by Vanden Bergh was used to evaluate the prenatal anxiety of young Persian pregnant women at risk of preterm labor. The normality of the data was assessed using the KolmogorovSmirnov test. Data analysis was performed using the analysis of variance procedure with the post hoc Bonferroni scorrection using SPSS 16.0 and the significance level was set at [P≤0.05]. The
comparison of continuous and categorical variables between the two groups was conducted using the independent samples t-tests and Chi square or Fisher’s exact tests, respectively.
Result and discussion. The results showed that the majority of participants, divided into intervention (83.3%) and control (91.7%) groups, were assessed as having sufficient economic status.
The mean age of pregnancy among women at risk of coronavirus in groups of control and intervention was (26.13 ± 1.45) and (26.02 ± 1.42) years old, respectively. The gestational age of most subjects in intervention and control groups was at 27week (22.2%) and 28week (25.0%) respectively.
Conclusion. This study presented a discrepancy with our research framework in terms of hospitalized subjects in the prenatal care unit as well as the number and content of educational sessions.
The study revealed the lowest anxiety amounts in the intervened individuals at all the evaluation times were related to the fear of changes in mother’s personal life criterion, while the fear of childbirth index caused the highest anxiety level among this group. There was no significant difference in fear of mood changes and its consequences on the child and fear of changes in mother’s personal life scores before and after implementing the group educational counseling sessions. However, a highly significant difference was found in fear of bearing a physically or mentally handicapped child, fear of childbirth, and fear of changes and disillusion in the marital relationship-MR scores of the intervention groups over time. According to Bonferroni correction, this variance was observed between before the intervention and the 6th and 10th weeks after the intervention.