Comparison of the effectiveness of compassion-focused therapy and dialectical behavior therapy on the Adversity quotients and emotional processing of adolescents with a history of self-injury

The present study was conducted with the aim of comparing the effectiveness of compassion-focused therapy and dialectical behavior therapy on the adversity quotients and emotional processing of adolescents with a history of self-injury. This research was a semi-experimental study with a pre-test, post-test design with experimental and control groups. The statistical population of the research included all female students of the second secondary level in the academic year of 2020-2021in Bushehr, who had a history of self-injury. Among them, 60 people were selected and randomly assigned to two experimental groups and one control group (20 people each). The first experimental group underwent compassion-based therapy and the second experimental group underwent dialectical behavioral therapy intervention, and the control group did not receive any intervention. The research tool were the self‐harm inventory (Sansone et al., 1998), Adversity Response Profile (Stoltz, 1997) and The Emotional Processing Scale (Baker et al., 2010). The results showed that both interventions increased the adversity quotients and reduced maladaptive emotional processing in adolescents (p<0.05). Also, the findings of the research indicated that there is a significant difference between compassion-focused therapy and dialectical behavior therapy, and compassion-focused therapy is more effective in increasing the adversity quotients and dialectical behavior therapy in emotional processing (p<0.001). According to the results of the research, both interventions can be used to improve the adversity quotients and emotional processing of adolescents with self-injury, along with other therapeutic interventions.