Background & Objectives: Serious reactions which normally is delayed and occur against serious stressor factors like natural disasters (for example: earth quake, flood and etc) and human made disasters (for example war, murder and etc) calls post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The aim of this study was Assessing the effectiveness of teaching problem solving skills in decreasing the symptoms of PTSD.
Methods:The type of this research is experimental. After clinical assessment and selecting with clinical assessment these individuals showed PTSD symptoms through the results of both Mississippi scale and clinical appointment, in which there were 160 cases. The cases were separated to two groups of experimental and control. Through an experimental method, we studied and measured changes of their status before and after examination and only case group had been chosen for problem solving skills teaching. In order to analyze the results of the study, a T test and Variance analysis (ANOVA) were used.
Results: The results showed that 61.6 percent of population showed PTSD symptoms and there was no significant difference between male and female in level of PTSD symptoms. There was a significant difference between, means level of PTSD in pre-test and post-test conditions, in addition there was no significant difference between levels of PTSD symptoms-decreasing, in female group after intervention, and male group. By comparing mean numbers of samples, in pre-test and post-test results of control and experiment groups in using problem-focused coping skills and decreasing emotion-focused coping skills, there was a significant differences. Also there was not any difference in using levels of coping methods, but indeed in amount of using emotion-focused coping method there was significant difference between male and female.
Conclusion: Presence of significant differences between pre-test and post-test results showed that training problem-solving-skills in decreasing PTSD symptoms is effective.
Ghomashchi F. Assessing the Effectiveness of Problem Solving Skills Teaching on the Improvement Reaction Method of Bam City Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Patients Resulting from Earthquake (Focused on Gender).. J Ardabil Univ Med Sci 2008; 8 (3) :294-300 URL: http://jarums.arums.ac.ir/article-1-318-en.html