Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation and Time Perspective Therapies on Depression and Co-rumination in Adolescent Students During the COVID-19 Outbreak

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

PhD Student in General Psychology, Department of psychology, Faculty of literature and Humanistic sciences, Sanandaj Branch Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran.

10.22034/trj.2022.62629

Abstract

Corona disease or Covid-19, which is a serious and unprecedented threat to life and health, started in China in December 2019 and quickly spread to all over the world. The continuous spread of this disease and serious measures to control it, including closing schools, has affected the mental health of adolescent’s students. Researches in the outbreak of covid-19 have reported the depression rate of adolescents between 25.2% and 57%. During the period of Covid-19, the prevalence of depression in the general population of Iran was between 7.9% and 42.3%. Among the depression-related variables that are more common in adolescents than in other age groups is co-rumination, which refers to excessive talking about problems and is characterized by repeating problems, speculating about problems, and focusing on negative emotions. Research in the outbreak of covid-19 showed the relationship between co-rumination and depression in people 18 years and older. Adolescents have co-rumination in all communication methods, especially face-to-face, and co-rumination leads to negative emotions in them. In addition, one of the consequences of co-rumination in adolescents is depression problems.
Due to the fact that depression has increased in adolescents during the Covid-19 and its relationship with common rumination has been confirmed, therefore it is necessary to pay attention to psychological treatments to reduce depression and co-rumination in adolescents. One of the therapeutic methods is emotion regulation, which is dealing with emotions and actively looking for solutions to improve them, which leads to positive psychological results. The effects of this therapy on psychological problems, especially adolescent depression, have been confirmed. No research has been published about the effectiveness of emotion regulation therapy on co-rumination until this research was conducted. But research has shown that emotion regulation therapy has been effective on adolescents' rumination.
Among the therapies that have received attention in recent years is time perspective. Time perspective is "the often non-conscious personal attitude that each of us holds towards time and the process whereby the continual flow of existence is bundled into time categories that help to give order, coherence, and meaning to our lives." Time perspective therapy is a new time-based therapy that focuses on clients' perceptions of their past, present, and future. This treatment has had a significant effect on the time balance and anxiety and social well-being of adolescents. The effectiveness of this therapy on depression and rumination has been confirmed. Therefore, the aim of the present study was the effectiveness of emotion regulation and time perspective therapies on depression and co-rumination of adolescent students in the outbreak of covid-19.
This research was the quasi-experimental research (pre-test, post-test and follow-up with a control group). The statistical population of this research was made up of all male students of the second secondary level (7th to 12th grade) with depression symptoms in Gilan-E-Gharb city, Kermanshah, Iran. After the initial screening and interview with the support of school counselors, 64 adolescents ‘students had symptoms of depression and 58 of them agreed to participate in therapy sessions. 57 people were randomly replaced in three groups: emotion regulation treatment (19 people), time perspective treatment (19 people) and control group (19 people). It should be noted that adolescent students were matched in three groups based on their educational level. One remaining person was placed in the control group due to research ethics. After holding the meetings and due to the drop of the sample, 17 people were finally evaluated in each group. Data were collected using the short form of the Beck Depression and the Co-Rumination Scales. For the first experimental group, emotional regulation therapy was performed in eight sessions, and for the second experimental group, intervention based on time perspective was performed in eight sessions. Finally, the data were analyzed using the analysis of variance test with repeated measure, Tukey and Bonferroni post hoc tests.
The results showed that emotion regulation therapy was effective in reducing depression and co-rumination in the post-test and follow-up, and the effectiveness of emotion regulation therapy was greater than time perspective therapy. Also, the results showed that the emotion regulation and time perspective therapies were effective in reducing co-rumination in the post-test and follow-up, and no significant difference was observed between the effectiveness of emotion regulation and time perspective therapies in reducing co-rumination.
Emotion regulation therapy by providing strategies such as recognizing emotions and reappraisal of negative and positive emotions not only leads to an increase in emotional awareness, but also causes people to manage their emotions in a positive way. Therefore, adolescents who experience symptoms of depression during the period of Covid-19, by receiving the therapeutic techniques of this therapy, including emotional reappraisal, can understand the psychological symptoms, including depression, and the negative emotions related to it, including sadness, and this can reduce depression and co-rumination. The time perspective therapy is based on techniques such as checking the dimensions of the past, present and future time perspective and makes people change their negative time perspective towards the past, present and future to positive perspectives. Therefore, these techniques help depressed adolescents to change the negative past, deterministic present and negative future into positive aspects, and this causes them to evaluate the negative experiences of the past with a positive view and to evaluate their current life as well. In addition, this therapy causes adolescent students to reduce negative predictions about the future and change these predictions with positive ones. In other words, this therapy creates time balance in people, and this causes them to reduce depression and co-rumination related to it.
The limitations of this research were the sample selection among adolescent boys, the two-month follow-up period, and the lack of sample screening based on the co-rumination. The results showed that emotion regulation and time perspective therapies were effective in reducing depression symptoms and co-rumination of adolescent students in the outbreak of covid-19. Therefore, psychological therapists are recommended to use emotion regulation and time perspective therapies to reduce the symptoms of depression and co-rumination in adolescents. In addition, the training of these two therapies is also suggested to school counselors; because this causes them to learn these two methods of therapy and use them in necessary cases to reduce the psychological problems of adolescent students.

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References

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