Effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction on negative automatic thoughts of female students with difficulty in emotional regulation

The present study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness based stress reduction on negative automatic thoughts of female students with difficulty in emotional regulation. The present study was quasi-experimental with pretest, posttest and control group design and three-month follow-up stage. The statistical population of the study included 228 female high school students with difficulty in emotional regulation in Tehran in the academic year 2020-21. 31 student were selected through purposive sampling method and were randomly accommodated into experimental and control groups. The experiment group received mindfulness based stress reduction in 10 online sessions of 75 minutes in one month. The applied questionnaires in this study included Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire  (NATQ) (Hollon, Kendall, 1980) and Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) (Gratz, Roemer, 2004). The data were analyzed through Mixed ANOVA. The results showed that mindfulness based stress reduction has significant effect on the negative automatic thoughts and difficulty in emotional regulation of female students with difficulty in emotional regulation (p<0.001). According to the findings of the present study, it can be concluded that mindfulness based stress reduction can be used as an efficient treatment to decrease negative automatic thoughts and difficulty in emotional regulation of students with difficulty in emotional regulation through employing techniques such as a gain awareness of the five main senses of the body, emotions, muscle function and awareness of the present.