Effectiveness of Religious Cognitive-behavioral Therapy in Comparison with Conventional Cognitive-behavioral Therapy in Improving the Affect and Hope of Patients with Depression

Some studies show that religion and spirituality play a role in increasing mental well-being. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of religious cognitive-behavioral therapy in comparison with conventional cognitive-behavioral therapy in improving the affect and hope in the patients with depression.

This is an experimental study with a pre-test post-test design. The participants were selected from people with depression who referred to counseling centers. In this study, 42 participants were included, and finally 30 remained until the end of the study. Fifteen patients received conventional cognitive-behavioral therapy and 15 received religious cognitive-behavioral therapy individually. Data collection instruments included semi-structured DSM-based interviews (SCID-I), Glark and Stock Religiosity Questionnaires (CRS), Beck Depression Second Edition (BDI-II), Watson’s Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), and Snyder’s Adult Hope Scale (AHS). The participants answered the questionnaires one week before the treatment and one week after the end of the treatment sessions. Each protocol consisted of ten sessions. Data were analyzed using ccovariance analysis. In this study, all the ethical considerations were observed and the authors reported no conflict of interests.

The findings showed that religious cognitive behavioral therapy significantly increases hope and its components more than conventional cognitive behavioral therapy (P<0.001). The findings also showed that although both religious and conventional treatments significantly increased positive affect and decreased negative affect, their effectiveness did not differ significantly.

Although religious cognitive-behavioral therapy promotes people's hope, but it should be promoted in terms of components and psychological techniques combined with spirituality to increase its effectiveness in increasing positive affect and reducing negative affect.