Forgiveness education for women with fibromyalgia who have been abused in childhood by their parents.
详细信息
文摘
In this study, the author compared the efficacy of forgiveness education and fibromyalgia health education on women with fibromyalgia who have experienced childhood abuse and neglect by one or more of their parents. Participants were 11 women with fibromyalgia between the ages of 21 and 68 who have experienced emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, and emotional or physical neglect in childhood. The participants were randomized to individualized forgiveness education n ＝ 5) or fibromyalgia health education n ＝ 6) and completed the once-weekly education for 24 weeks. Participants completed the following measures at the pretesting, the posttesting, and the 12-week follow-up: the Enright Forgiveness Inventory, the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire, the Beck Depression Inventory-II, the State Trait Anxiety Inventory, the State Trait Anger Expression Inventory-II, the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, and the Coping Strategies Questionnaire. The participants also completed the forgiveness education final test and the fibromyalgia health education final test at the posttesting. In the pretest-posttest results, the participants in the forgiveness education program showed significantly greater improvements in forgiveness and overall fibromyalgia health relative to the fibromyalgia health education participants. In addition, the forgiveness education participants demonstrated a significantly higher mean score in the forgiveness education final test compared to the fibromyalgia health education participants. On the other hand, the fibromyalgia health education participants showed a significantly higher mean score in the fibromyalgia health education final test compared to the forgiveness education participants. In the pretest-follow up results, forgiveness education participants n ＝ 4) demonstrated significantly greater improvements in forgiveness and overall fibromyalgia health, and significantly greater reductions in trait anxiety and state anger compared to fibromyalgia health education participants n ＝ 6). The results of the stronger improvement at the follow-up for the forgiveness group indicate that the forgiveness education has a long-term effect in improving fibromyalgia patients psychological and physical health related to fibromyalgia. In addition, the results of the repeated-measures ANCOVA revealed that the change in the participants forgiveness level was the mediator between the educational programs and the dependent variables. This strengthened the findings that forgiveness influenced the participants physical and emotional health.