Investigating the effect of metacognitive therapy (MCT) on increasing self-esteem and reducing self-harm symptoms in delinquent adolescents

Adolescence is one of the most important stages of life in the physical, mental and social development of a person; This period is accompanied by a kind of confusion with a decrease in self-esteem, low self-esteem and negative self-concept, which leads to a decrease in natural activities and social interactions, and leads to issues such as self-harm and delinquency. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of metacognitive therapy on increasing self-esteem and reducing self-harm symptoms in delinquent adolescents. This research is applied in terms of purpose and in terms of implementation, it is one of the semi-experimental projects of the pre-test type - after the test with the control group. The community in question included all juvenile delinquent boys aged 14 to 18 from the Arak Correctional Center. To this end, 40 of these boys were randomly selected and randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups (each group of 20 people) and completed a 58-item CooperSmith self-esteem questionnaire and a Sanson self-harm questionnaire. The experimental group then underwent a metacognitive therapy session for 8 days and the control group received no training. Finally, the self-esteem and self-harm tests were taken from both groups based on the same two questionnaires and the results were compared. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (ANCOVA analysis of covariance). The results showed that the mean scores of self-esteem and self-harm of the experimental group in the post-test were significantly different from the control group. Based on the results of this study, metacognitive therapy has been effective in increasing self-esteem and reducing self-harm symptoms.