Comparing the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy, biofeedback and EMDR on anxiety sensitivity in women with migraine

Abstract

This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy, biofeedback and EMDR on anxiety sensitivity in women with migraine. The current research was of an applied type and a quasi-experimental design of pre-test, post-test and follow-up with a control group, in which three separate experimental groups and one control group were used. The statistical population of the present study includes all women who visited Tehran's Cheshm Andaz Ayandeh clinic in 2022 due to migraine. Sixty people were randomly selected and then equally assigned to groups (15 people in each group). Cognitive behavioral therapy was performed based on the Otis et al.’s (2021) protocol in 12 90-minute sessions; EMDR was performed according to the protocol of Maxfield (2019) in 3 sessions of 90 minutes, and biofeedback was performed according to the protocol of Mullally et al.’s (2009) in 15 sessions of 60 minutes. Also, the present study had a one-month follow-up phase. By controlling the effect of pre-test scores for research variables, the difference of all 4 groups in both post-test and follow-up stages for anxiety sensitivity is statistically significant. The effect of group membership for the anxiety sensitivity variable was 0.61 in the post-test phase and 0.52 in the follow-up phase. It shows that group membership explains 0.61 of the changes in grades in the post-test stage and 0.52 in grades in the follow-up stage. In other words, the treatment methods improved 0.52 of anxiety sensitivity in the follow-up. The results of the pairwise comparison showed in the analysis that all three treatments had a significant effect on reducing anxiety sensitivity. However, these three treatments were similar in terms of their effect on anxiety sensitivity.