Comparing the Effectiveness of Mindful Emotion Focused Psychodrama Training, Psychodrama and Emotion Focused Training on Defense Mechanism of Divorced Women

Defense mechanisms play a very important role in the ability to cope with stress and adaptability of divorced women. Therefore, the aim of this study was to comparing the effectiveness of mindful emotion focused psychodrama training, psychodrama and emotion focused training on defense mechanism of divorced women. 

This research was a semi-experimental study with the design of three experimental groups and one control group with pre-test, post-test and follow-up. The statistical population was divorced women in the spring of 2022 in Isfahan, Iran. From them, 64 divorced women were selected by purposive sampling method and randomly assigned in three experimental groups and a control group (15 people for each group). Defense mechanism questionnaire of Andrews et al (1993) was used to assess dependent variables in three stages. The three training groups were each trained for 12 sessions of 90 minutes and the control group did not receive any training. The data were analyzed by repeated measure analysis of variance and post-hoc Bonferroni test by SPSS version 26.

The finding of the research showed that three methods of mindful emotion focused psychodrama training, psychodrama training and emotion focused training were effective in reducing the immature and neurotic defense mechanisms (p<0.01). In increasing the mature defense mechanisms, only psychodrama training with the highest effectiveness and then emotion focused training were effective (p<0.01).

Considering the equal effectiveness of mindful emotion focused psychodrama training, psychodrama and emotion focused training on reducing the neurotic and immature defense mechanisms, as well as psychodrama training as the most effective method and then emotion focused training on the promotion of mature defense mechanisms, it is suggested that these trainings be used for divorced women in counseling and psychotherapy centers.