فهرست مطالب leili akhlaghi jami

Increased stress and anxiety in adolescents is critical and may cause health issues, dysfunctions, educational and professional problems, and risky behaviors. Cognition and anxiety are interrelated. Cognition can affect anxiety and anxiety may reduce cognitive performance by affecting working memory capacity and executive functions. Working memory is a complex limited–capacity system of cognition that simultaneously stores and processes data. An approach used for controlling stress and anxiety is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Additionally, another novel treatment method with examinable effectiveness is Cognitive Rehabilitation Treatment (CRT) which attempts to repair cognitive deficits. Thus, this study aimed to compare the effects of ACT and CRT in reducing stress and anxiety among female high schoolers.

This was a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest–follow–up and a control group design. The statistical population included all female high school students (age range: 14–16 y) in District 20 of Tehran City, Iran, in the academic year of 2018–2019. Sampling was performed in two stages. Initially, the Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale (DASS–21; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) was purposively distributed among the students of one of the selected high schools. Next, among those who obtained higher scores in the subscales of anxiety and stress, 45 students were randomly selected. The selected samples were randomly placed into two experimental groups, including ACT and CRT and one control group (n=15/group). The inclusion criteria were the willingness and cooperation of students to participate in the sessions; signing the commitment letter of continuous participation in therapy sessions; the ability to participate in sessions respecting the number and timing of the sessions; being a student in the secondary high school, and not consuming any psychiatric medications for 3 months before the first treatment session. The exclusion criteria included absence from >2 training sessions and unwillingness to continue cooperation. For one experimental group, the ACT intervention was applied based on the protocol provided by Hayes et al. (1999); this intervention was performed in eight 90–minute sessions two days a week. The other experimental group underwent CRT for working memory. This group received training based on Captain's Log cognitive rehabilitation software version 2018 for eight 90–minute sessions and two days a week. The control group received no intervention. The required data were collected using DASS–21. The obtained data were analyzed by repeated–measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Bonferroni post–hoc test in SPSS at the significance level of p<0.05.

Regarding stress, the main effect of time (F=64.21, p<0.001) and the effect of group (F=9.45, p=0.011) and concerning anxiety, the main effect of time (F=76.82, p<0.001) and group effect (F=11.43, p=0.008) were significant. In other words, changes in the control group were different from those of the two experimental groups; both experimental groups achieved significantly lower scores in stress and anxiety in the posttest and follow–up stages. Moreover, there was a significant difference between the ACT and control groups in stress and anxiety (p<0.001); there was also a significant difference in stress and anxiety between the CRT and control groups (p<0.001). However, there was no significant difference between the test groups respecting reducing stress (p=0.726) and anxiety (p=0.942); both treatment methods presented desirable effectiveness in this respect.

Both ACT and CTR methods are effective in reducing anxiety and stress in students; therefore, they could be considered as useful methods in the field.

Anxiety and stress degraded the cognitive function of tasks involved in working memory and decreased working memory capacity and efficiency. Working memory is a complex, limited-capacity cognitive system that prepares information to be stored while processing it simultaneously. One of the new therapeutic approaches whose effectiveness in the reduction of stress and anxiety might be considered is cognitive rehabilitation; the efforts to repair cognitive deficits.This study is designed to evaluate the efficacy of cognitive rehabilitation therapy (CRT) on stress and anxiety of the high school second lever female students in Tehran.

The following study is a semi-experimental study with pretest- posttest and control group with a follow-up stage. The target society of this research includes female students with symptoms of anxiety and stress at the second level of high school in Tehran during the academic year of 2018-2019. The participants are 30 female students in two matched groups (15 participants within the experimental group and 15 ones in the control group) selected by the available sampling method. The experimental group received eight sessions of 90 minutes of individual CRT intervention using computer-based cognitive rehabilitation software. The control group did not have any type of intervention and recruited from the waiting list. The measurement instrument was the depression anxiety and stress scale (DASS) distributed in three different periods of time (pretest, posttest, and follow-up stages. The obtained data were analyzed by SPSS-22. Indicators such as mean and standard deviation and multivariate analysis of covariance were used. The Levin test helped us to check the homogeneity of variances.

The results indicated that the CRT method of intervention effectively reduced the high school second level female students’ stress and anxiety. However, just its effect on anxiety remained persistent untill the follow-up period.

CRT method effectively affects the anxiety and stress of high school second level female student, and it might be considered as a useful way in the field.

Social anxiety disorder is one of the most prevalent psychiatric disorders in the students’ population. This disorder has some negative effects on scientific performance during education and on job performance in the future. In line with this, mental health specialists suggested different procedures to the treatment of social anxiety. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of Group Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (GCBT) and Group Training of Social Skills on reducing social anxiety in the students of Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz (Iran). This experimental research involved both pretest-posttest group design with control group. The population of this study included all BA students of Shahid Chamran University that 10 percent of these students were selected by cluster sampling. From this sample 45 students that achieved high scores in social anxiety scale were randomly assigned to experimental groups (15 subjects in GCBT and 15 subjects in group training of social skills) and control group (15 subjects). The gathered data were subjected to one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Sheffe following test. The findings showed that there was a significant difference between group CBT and group training of social skills. Moreover, significant difference existed between training of social skills and control group. But, there was not any difference between the Training of Social Skills and CBT. The group CBT and group training of social skills had efficacy on social anxiety in students. Since social anxiety intensifies and prone to other mental disorders and also due to its negative effect on academic performance of students in university's environment as well as future work environment, we can take some useful steps using these training to advance educational and occupational goals and also to establish effective relationships and more success.