The Effectiveness of Positive Psychology Training with Emphasis on Religious Doctrines on Reducing students’ High-risk Behaviors with Suicidal Thoughts

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of positive psychology training with an emphasis on religious doctrines on reducing high-risk behaviors of students with suicidal thought in high school in Khalkhal. This study was a semi-experimental study with a pre-test-post-test-follow-up design with an experimental and control group. The research sample was 30 students from the second-grade girls' high schools in Khalkhal who were selected by multi-stage purposful sampling and randomly assigned in two experimental and control groups. Beck Suicide Thought Scale and Iranian Adolescents' Risk Scale were used to measuring variables. The experimental group received positive psychology with a focus on religious doctrines for ten sessions, while the control group received no training. Data were analyzed by repeated-measures analysis of variance. The results showed that the intervention has a positive effect on reducing high-risk behaviors and this effect continued in the follow-up. Generally, it can be said that positive psychology, with emphasis on religious doctrines with a strong theoretical and research background, is an appropriate strategy. It reduces students' high-risk behaviors with suicidal thoughts and can be used as a useful intervention to reduce this type of disorder.