Comparison of the Effectiveness of Emotion-Focused Therapy and Cognitive-Behavior Therapy on Emotional Regulation and Psychological Well-Being of Divorced Women

  The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of emotion-oriented therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy on emotion regulation and psychological well-being of divorced women.

The present study was a quasi-experimental study with pre-test, post-test and two-month follow-up with a control group. The study population consisted of divorced women under the auspices of social service bases in District 2 of Tehran in 1398. The sample of this study was 60 women who were selected by available sampling method from absolute women covered by social service bases in District 2 of Tehran and randomly assigned to two experimental groups and one control group (20 people in each group). The research instruments were the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefsky and Craig, 2006) and the Psychological Well-Being Scale (Reef, 1980). For the first experimental group, emotional therapy (Mirzazadeh et al., 2012) and for the second experimental group, cognitive-behavioral therapy (Monaz et al., 2007) was held in 9 sessions of 120 minutes, but the control group did not receive any intervention. To analyze the data, repeated measures analysis of variance and Banferroni post hoc tests were used.

  Both treatments improved emotion regulation and psychological well-being of divorced women at the end of the intervention and follow-up period (p <0.01), but emotion-oriented therapy was more effective in improving their emotion regulation than cognitive-behavioral therapy (0.01). 0> p). There was no difference between these two treatments in increasing the psychological well-being of divorced women (p <0.05).

These two therapies are useful interventions to improve emotion regulation and psychological well-being of divorced women.