Interpersonal Psychotherapy on Anxiety and Alexithymia in Women with Generalized Anxiety

Generalized anxiety disorder is one of the common psychiatric disorders that causes discomfort and abnormality in its behavioral and cognitive behavior. Chronic garment, high prevalence, and association of generalized anxiety disorder with psychosocial disturbances suggest this disorder as one of the most severe disabling disorders in adulthood, which shows a weak recovery without treatment. Emotional exacerbations increase abnormal physical stimuli, illuminate physical symptoms of emotional arousal, and display emotional distress through physical complaints. However, the effect of interpersonal psychotherapy on emotional anxiety and anxiety felt in women with anxiety as a research vacuum. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of interpersonal psychotherapy on stress and emotional anxiety in women with generalized anxiety. This research was a quantitative study. In this research, a semi-experimental design with pretest and posttest design with the control group was used to investigate the effect of interpersonal psychotherapy on anxiety and emotional anxiety in women with generalized anxiety. The statistical population of this study was all women with general anxiety in Tehran. From this population, 30 women with generalized anxiety were selected using available sampling method. The women divided into control and experimental groups using simple random sampling. The data collection tool was Toronto Emotional Inventory and the Beck Anxiety Questionnaire. First, for experimental and control groups, anxiety and excitement pretest was performed for both groups (experimental and control), then a lesson of 8 sessions of psychotherapy was conducted between the individual for the experimental group, but for the control group, no training or treatment applied; immediately after An interpersonal psychotherapy was completed for the experimental group, posttest, anxiety and emotional collapse for both groups, and finally analyzed by SPSS software 20 and ANCOVA. In this study, 30 women with generalized anxiety (15 women in the control group and 15 in the experimental group) were present; the mean age was 30.3, with a standard deviation of 3.7 years. The education status of the participants was in both groups of peers, consisting of 3 people in the cycle, 5 in the diploma, 5 in the undergraduate degree, 12 in the bachelor's degree, and 5 in the master's degree and higher. The mean of anxiety decreased from 49.37±8.63 to 27.74±10.98, and the Alexithymia of the experimental group dropped from 60.11±8.15 to 43.43±10.11, respectively, and the results of the covariance analysis indicated that interpersonal psychotherapy significantly reduced the anxiety and Alexithymia of women with generalized anxiety (p<0.001). The findings of this study indicate that interpersonal psychotherapy as effective short-term treatment is effective in anxiety and emotional anxiety in women with general anxiety. According to the above, this method of treatment, both economically and economically timely, can be widely used in counseling and psychotherapy centers and clinics.