Determining the Effectiveness of Regular Desensitization With Eye Movements and Reprocessing on Psychological Stress (Anxiety and Depression) in Divorced Women

Divorce is one of the most stressful events in life. The divorce experience can affect the compatibility of couples and their children in all psychological, physical, social and emotional dimensions and reduces the performance and efficiency of family members after divorce. The experience of depression and anxiety after divorce is one of the most common experiences of divorced people that directly and in the long–term affects a person's life. Studies show that psychotherapy can improve the outcomes of divorced women. One of these treatments is regular desensitization with eye movements and reprocessing. The basis of the treatment of desensitization with eye movements is to draw the patient's attention to an external stimulus while simultaneously focusing on the accident; the effect of eye movement in this treatment method impairs functional memory and reduces the amount of excitement associated with it by reducing sharpness. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the effectiveness of regular desensitization with eye movements and reprocessing on psychological stress (anxiety and depression) in divorced women.

The method of this research was quasi–experimental with a pretest and posttest design with a control group. Among all divorced women referring to counseling and psychological services in District 10 of Tehran, Iran from September 2018 to March 2019, 30 eligible volunteers were selected by the available sampling method. They were randomly assigned to two groups of 15 experimental and control. The criteria for women to enter the research were as follows: at least six months have passed since their divorce, being literate in reading and writing, age range between 20 and 50 years, not using medication, counseling and psychological services during treatment sessions, willingness and informed consent to participate in the research project. The criteria for women to leave the research were illiteracy, use of psychiatric drugs and simultaneous use of counseling and psychological services during treatment sessions, involvement in a new emotional relationship, absence of more than two sessions from therapy sessions, and non–cooperation in the process of training sessions. To collect the information in the pretest and posttest stages, Psychological Disorders Symptoms Checklist (SCL–90) (Derogatis, 1983) was used. For the experimental group, desensitization intervention with eye movements and reprocessing according to Shapiro's protocol (2014) was performed in 6 sessions of 60 minutes, but the control group did not receive training. To statistically analyze the data, SPSS version 22 software was used on two levels of descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. At the level of descriptive statistics, mean and standard deviation were used, and at the level of inferential statistics, The Chi–square test, independent t test and multivariate covariance analysis were used. The significance level was set at 0.05.

The results showed that after removing the effect of the pretest scores, in the posttest, the mean scores of anxiety (p<0.001) and depression (p<0.001) in the experimental group decreased significantly compared to the control group.

Based on the research findings, the regular desensitization method with eye movements and reprocessing are effective in reducing anxiety and depression in divorced women. Therefore, the mentioned treatment should be used as a complementary treatment in solving the psychological problems of divorced women.