Qom University of Medical Sciences Journal

Background and Objectives: Addiction and its complications is one of the major problems in the world and various types of psychotherapy approaches are used for its treatment. Among these approaches, cognitive-behavioral therapies have been widely used for the treatment of addiction in recent decades. The aim of this study was to estimate the effect of cognitive-behavioral therapies on the treatment of addicts in Iran by systematic review and meta-analysis method.

Methods: Meta-analysis method was used, without limitation, to investigate all internal databases as well as Medlib, Sid, Magiran, Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopuse, Iranmedex, and ISI. Finally, 12 out of 63 articles were entered into the meta-analysis. Meta-regression was used to investigate the heterogeneity of the studies.

Results: In this study, 12 articles were investigated, which increased to 25 studies, including therapeutic approaches. In 6 studies, no significant difference was observed in the experimental group before and after intervention, and in the remaining 19 studies the difference was significant. Combination of the results of 25 studies and using a random effects model of meta-analysis showed that cognitive-behavioral therapy was effective in the treatment of addiction (p<0.001). The standardized effect size in the experimental group before and after cognitive-behavioral therapy, was estimated to be -2.08 and its 95% confidence interval was -1.57 to -2.58. The standardized effect size in control and experimental groups after cognitive-behavioral therapy was estimated 0.40 and its 95% confidence interval was 0.10 to 0.70).

Conclusion: Given that cognitive-behavioral therapy is effective in reducing addiction and its symptoms, this method can be used as a common treatment of addiction.