Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Abstract
Background & Objectives: Infertility could be a source of psychosocial suffering for women. Couples diagnosed with infertility encounter a range of stressful experiences related to their condition. These experiences include strain on marital and family relationships, changes in sexual dynamics, and other unavoidable challenges. The negative consequences of women's infertility have led therapists and researchers to intervene in a variety of ways to reduce infertile women's problems. Healing codes training and mindfulness–based cognitive therapy emphasize the study of emotions and positive experiences and focus on the study of deficiencies and mental deficiencies and low performance in studying human abilities and adaptive function. Infertility could be a life crisis with various biosociocultural, emotional, and financial problems. Infertile couples may encounter social pressures in addition to the direct impacts of infertility. This study aimed to compare the effects of healing codes training and mindfulness–based cognitive therapy on infertility stigma and self–concept in infertile women.
Methods: This research method was quasi–experimental and employed a pretest–posttest, and follow–up design with three groups (2 experimental groups and 1 control group). To conduct the research, 60 women were recruited from infertile women referring to the Mehr–e–Madar Infertility Treatment Centers, Hazrat–e–Maryam Infertility Clinic (Shahid Beheshti Hospital), and Isfahan Infertility and Infertility Center in 2023. Convenience sampling was employed to select them based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The volunteers were then randomly assigned to two experimental groups of healing codes training and mindfulness–based cognitive therapy (each group with 20 people) and one control group (20 people ). The participants completed the Infertile Stigma Scale (Fu et al., 2015) and the Beck Self–Concept Test (Beck et al., 1990). The experimental group of healing codes training received 14 sessions of healing codes training (one 90–minute session per week). The experimental mindfulness–based cognitive therapy group received the MBCT in eight sessions (one 90–minute session per week). The control group was placed on the waiting list. In the current research, descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (analysis of variance with repeated measurements and Bonferroni's post hoc test) were used to analyze the data. Also, the significance level was set at 0.05. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 24 software.
Results: According to the findings in the variables of stigma related to infertility and self–concept, analysis of variance for intragroup factor (time) (p<0.001), intergroup factor (p<0.001), and interaction between group and time (p<0.001) was significant. In experimental group 1, the variable scores of stigma associated with infertility in the posttest and follow–up stages were significantly different from the pretest stage (p<0.001). A significant difference was observed in the mean scores of stigma related to infertility (p<0.001) and self–concept (p=0.003) in the posttest and follow–up compared to the pretest. However, no significant difference was observed between the two stages of posttest and follow–up in stigma associated with infertility in experimental group 1 (p=0.730) and experimental group 2 (p=0.460) and self–concept in experimental group 2 (p=1.000). Also, in the self–concept variable, there was a significant difference between the effectiveness of mindfulness–based cognitive therapy and healing codes training (p<0.001).   
Conclusion: According to the results of the research, both mindfulness–based cognitive therapy and healing codes training are effective in reducing the stigma associated with infertility, and mindfulness–based cognitive therapy is more effective in improving the self–concept of infertile women.