Limitations
thalassemia
THALASSEMIA
The sampling was limited to the Kerman thalassemia center, so we should be cautious when generalizing the results to people outside the research community. Participants were unwilling to participate in the study because the counselling was online, and the researcher had no physical presence. Some patients had unfavorable physical and mental condition due to the nature of thalassemia, so they were reluctant to continue the study. Due to the conditions of COVID-19 and the reasons mentioned in the previous sentences, it was not possible to follow up with the patients. As the patients in the intervention and the control groups went to the same thalassemia center for blood sampling, they might have exchanged the counseling information, which was another limitation of the present study. In addition, as the effect sizes were small, the interpretation of the results should be with cautions and other studies with larger samples size should conduct to confirm the efficacy of the intervention.