Dear Editor,
Regarding the article published in 04 December, 2015 entitled “effectiveness of hope therapy protocol on depression and hope in amphetamine users” (1), negligence of some research requirements in the paper made us submit a letter of criticism to the editor-in-chief. We hope this criticism is published in the next issue of the journal.
- The first principle in the human studies is the informed consent. Consent should be written in clinical trials.
No reference was made to this important point in this study (2).
- The age of the subjects was mentioned as 18 to 25 years in the text. But, their age was stated as below 2 in the table. The education was also below 2.
- Intervention variables should be matched in trials. It was important to mention the amount and duration of materials consumption.
- In the instruments section, the scientific definitions (the obtained scores of depression and hope) of the Beck depression inventory and the Snyder hope scale were not given (3-5).
- In short, the time and place of the study were unknown.
- There was no declaration for the conflict of interest in the paper.
- It is necessary to include the content of instructional sessions (hope protocol training).
- The article mentioned by the author was checked and fortunately all of her comments were right.
- The references were checked and it was found that just 1 article was related to the subject and the others were quite irrelevant.
- Hope therapy was started and explained by Dr. Farshad Bahari in Iran, but his book was not cited even in the protocol (5).
The titles of the tables were incorrect; they should be given as follows: “The distribution of the cases and controls according to the obtained scales from Beck inventory and Snyder scale before and after the intervention... time and place.” Each table should display a result, independently.
