Objective To explore the effect of cognitive therapy on patients with traumatic paraplegia.Methods Toally 100 traumatic paraplegia patients were randomly divided into observation group and control group with 50 cases in each.The control group received routine nursing intervention and the observation group cognitive therapy on the basis of intervention for the control group.The two groups were compared in terms of anxiety,depression,mental health,suicidal ideation and quality of life by the instruments of self-rating anxiety scale (SAS),self-rating depression scale (SDS) and suicide attitude questionnaire (SQA) before and after intervention.Results Before the intervention,the scores by SDS,SAS scores and SQA were insignificant different between the groups (P＞0.05).Mter the intervention,the scores on suicidal ideation in the observation group were significantly higher and the quality of life were significantly higher and the depresion and anxiety and the mental health status were lower than those of the control group (P ＜0.05).Conclusion The cognitive therapy for the patients with traumatic paraplegia can significantly alleviate their depression and anxiety,reduce their suicidal ideation and improve the quality of life.