Investigate the Effect of Emotion Regulation Training on Spiritual Intelligence, Health Concern and Psychological Distress in Women with Depression

Women with depression are falling in terms of psychological especially in the field of spiritual intelligence, health concern and psychological distress and one of the effective methods in improving the psychological characteristics is emotion regulation training method. Present study aimed to investigate the effect of emotion regulation training on spiritual intelligence, health concern and psychological distress in women with depression.

This study was semi-experimental with a pretest and posttest design with an experimental and control groups. The research population was women with depression referred to psychological services clinics of Ahvaz city in 2018 year, who among them 50 people were selected by available sampling method and randomly replaced into two equal groups (each group 25 people). The experimental group received eight sessions of 90 minute for two months (one session a week) emotion regulation training and the control group placed on the waiting list for training. Data were collected by questionnaires of demographic profile, depression, spiritual intelligence, health concern and psychological distress and were analyzed with multivariate analysis of covariance method in the SPSS-18 software.

The findings showed that before training there was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of spiritual intelligence, health concern and psychological distress (P>0/05), but after training there was a significant difference between groups in terms of all three variables (P<0/001). Based on the results of multivariate analysis of covariance, the emotion regulation training led to increased spiritual intelligence (F=107/15, P<0/001) and decreased health concern (F=139/64, P<0/001) and psychological distress (F=142/28, P<0/001) in women with depression.

The results indicated the effect of emotion regulation training on increasing spiritual intelligence and decreasing health concern and psychological distress in women with depression. Therefore, it is recommended that therapists and clinical psychologists use emotion regulation training along with other methods such as mindfulness training or acceptance and commitment training to increase spiritual intelligence and decrease health concern and psychological distress, especially in women with depression.