Introduction: Multiple Sclerosis is a chronic disease of the Central Nervous System (CNS). It is widely accepted that this disease might be related to several psychiatric disorders, especially depression. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the effect of motivational interviewing on depression of patients with multiple sclerosis referring to Isfahan Alzahra Hospital.

Methods: This was a quasi-experimental study conducted on control and intervention groups with before and after design. Sixty patients with multiple sclerosis were selected by convenience sampling from patients referred to Isfahan Alzahra University Hospital MS clinic, in 2014, and were randomly allocated to control and intervention groups. Motivational interviewing sessions were performed for the intervention group for three weeks, one hour depression. Data were collected before and one month after the intervention using Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Data were analyzed with the SPSS software, using independent t-test, paired t-test, Mann-Whitney and Chi-squared test.

Results: After the intervention, the mean depression in the intervention group decreased from 28.42 ± 14.5 to 21.08 ± 7.2, showing a significant decrease in patients’ depression levels (P < 0.05), while in the control group before and after the intervention (26.12 ± 13.77 and 25.6 ± 8, respectively) this figure showed no significant difference (P > 0.05). The score of depression disorder after the intervention in patients of the intervention and control groups was significantly different (P < 0.05).

Conclusions: Our research findings indicated the efficacy of motivational interviewing for reducing depression of patients with multiple sclerosis disease suggesting its application to other chronic diseases.