Pages: 21-29

Abstract

MS patients suffer from many psychological problems. The purpose of this study was to examine the severity of somatic, anxiety and depression symptoms and the role of emotion regulation strategies on predicting it in MS patients. In this research, 42 MS patients were availability selected in Nahavand and Malayer cities. The method research was correlation. The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski et al, 2002) and Psychological Signs Scale (Dura et al, 2007) used for data collection. The Pierson correlation coefficient and multivariate regression was used for analyzing the data. Results showed that 42.8% of MS patient had summarization symptoms, 35.7% depression symptoms and 28.5% anxiety symptoms. Results of correlation indicated that there was meaningful correlation between positive refocusing, positive reappraisal, other-blame, self-blame, rumination, catastrophizing and acceptance and psychological signs. According to regression results, emotion regulations strategies explain approximately 69% the variance of psychological signs in MS patients, and the rumination, self-blame and acceptance have been respectively predicted the psychological signs in MS patients. The results supported the severity of psychological symptoms and meaningful relationship of emotional regulation strategies with those symptoms among MS patients and attending to the role of trainings based emotion regulation in reducing the psychological symptoms of MS patients is specially importance for therapists and researchers of health psychology.