Document Type : Research Article
Authors
1 PhD. Student, Department of Psychology, Marvdasht branch, Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht, Iran.
2 2Department of Psychology, Marvdasht branch, Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht, Iran.
3 3- Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Marvdasht branch, Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht, Iran.
4 Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Isfahan University, Isfahan, Iran.
Abstract
Introduction
Adolescence is an important period of human development that is associated with neurological, hormonal, physiological and social changes. During this period, teenagers cope with many stressful factors. Self-injurious behaviors appear in different ways. He has divided self-injurious behaviors into three categories: 1- severe self-injurious behaviors that are observed in mental patients and because of which a person causes serious damage to his own body tissue, such as cutting off a limb from the body. 2- stereotyped (involuntary) self-harming behaviors that are observed in mentally retarded, autism or Tourette syndrome. In such a situation, the person involuntarily and repeatedly hits himself (such as banging his head against the wall). 3- Self-harm behaviors are the most common type and are done under the influence of fashion or other factors: such as scratching and cutting the skin, picking wounds., nail biting, cosmetic surgery, and skin carving. One of the most common problems among teenagers today is self-injurious behavior, which is found to a large extent in all cultures. The aim of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of dialectical behavior therapy on the coefficient of difficulty, life expectancy and emotional processing of adolescents with self-harm.
Method
The research method was semi-experimental with a pre-test, post-test design with experimental and control groups. The statistical population of the research included all female students of the second secondary level of Bushehr 2019-2020 academic year who had a history of self-injury. And the sample size includes 40 people, 20 people were randomly placed and selected in the experimental group and 20 people in the control group. The experimental group underwent dialectical behavior therapy intervention, and the control group did not receive any intervention. The research tools were self-injurious behavior questionnaire (Sanson et al., 1998), response to difficulty profile (Stoltz, 1997), Miller Hope Scale (1986) and emotional processing questionnaire (Baker et al., 2010).
Results
The results showed that the intervention has increased the difficulty coefficient, life expectancy and reduced maladaptive emotional processing in adolescents (p<0.05). Also, the research findings indicated that dialectical behavior therapy is an effective method in emotional processing (p<0.001).
It shows the results of univariate analysis of covariance to investigate the effect of the independent variable on each of the dependent variables. The F value obtained for all dependent variables is significant at the P<0.05 level; Therefore, it can be said that dialectical behavior therapy influences emotional processing variables, difficulty coefficient and life expectancy.
Discussion
According to the results of the research, this intervention can be used to improve the difficulty factor, life expectancy and emotional processing of adolescents with self-injury, along with other therapeutic interventions. Also, the focus of dialectical behavior therapy on mindfulness, which is done to observe and describe events non-judgmentally, and awareness and alertness focused on the present moment, leads to the natural development of distress tolerance, and the person learns to deal with emotions without evaluating and trying to change or control them and without arousal. or experience distress and thereby learned the skill of coping with adverse events, which leads to an increase in the level of difficulty in facing adverse and stimulating life events.
Keywords
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