The Effect of Gross Model Emotion Regulation Intervention on Educational Adaptation and Health Anxiety of Adolescents with Families Affected by Covid-19

Among the negative consequences of the Covid-19 disease among adolescent family members is the creation of educational adjustment problems and health anxiety. Therefore,the present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effect of the Gross model emotion regulation intervention on educational adaptation and health anxiety of adolescents with families affected by Covid-19.

The research was a quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test and control groups and the statistical population included adolescents aged 13 to 18 years living in Naghadeh who had a person with Covid-19 in their family in 2021. The statistical sample size was 40 people (20 in the experimental group and 20 in the control group) from the statistical population who were selected by available sampling method and randomly placed in the control and experimental groups. For the experimental group, 8 sessions of 90-minute emotion regulation sessions based on the Gross model were performed and the control group did not receive any treatment. The data were collected using Sinha and Singh's (1993) Educational Adaptation Questionnaire and Salkoskis et al.'s (2002) Short Health Anxiety Questionnaire and were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance using SPSS version 26 software.

The average scores of educational adaptation in the stages before and after the intervention in the experimental group were 40.10 and 28.30, respectively, and in the control group, 39.75 and 39.93, respectively. Also, the average scores of health anxiety in the stages before and after the intervention in the experimental group were 43.30 and 32.15, respectively, and in the control group, 44.15 and 45.50, respectively. The results of covariance analysis showed that the mean of educational adaptation and health anxiety in the experimental group, after the emotion regulation intervention, has decreased significantly compared to the control group (p<0.01).

The results of this research indicate that the emotion regulation intervention has significantly improved educational adaptation and reduced health anxiety, so the use of this intervention is recommended for adolescents with families affected by Covid-19.