Effectiveness of Existential Therapy on Emotional Capital, Cognitive Emotion Regulation, and Mental Well-Being of Undergraduate Female Students with Social Anxiety: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Existential therapy is one of the treatments that can be effective in improving mental health and enriching students' lives. Therefore, this research was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of existential therapy on emotional capital, cognitive regulation of emotion, and mental well-being of undergraduate female students with social anxiety.

This quasi-experimental study with a pre-test, post-test, and follow-up design with a control group was performed on 30 undergraduate female students suffering from social anxiety in the Faculty of Humanities of Khomeinishahr University in 2022, who were selected by purposive sampling and randomly divided into two experimental and control groups (15 people in each group). The research tools included Connor et al.’s Social Anxiety Questionnaire, Gratz's Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, Ryff's Psychological Well-being Questionnaire, and Golparvar's Emotional Capital Questionnaire. Nazari and Zarghami’s Existential Therapy Approach was implemented in eight 2-hour sessions on the experimental group, and the control group did not receive any treatment. Data was analyzed using two-way repeated measures ANOVA.

The results showed that existential therapy significantly improved emotional capital, cognitive regulation of emotions, and mental well-being in undergraduate female students with social anxiety and this effectiveness was sustained over time (p<0.001).

The results of the study indicated the effect of existential therapy on the improvement of psychological characteristics in the experimental group; therefore, it is recommended that therapists use existential therapy along with other treatment methods to improve students' psychological health.