THE EFFECT OF COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY ON THE DEPRESSION OF SUICIDE ATTEMPTERS DISCHARGED FROM MEDICAL EDUCATION CENTERS IN URMIA, IRAN IN 2020

Suicide is among the most important indicators of the mental health of the people in a society, which is caused by several factors, and depression is one of the most critical factors related to suicide attempts. Cognitive psychotherapy is one of the effective methods for people with suicidal thoughts, which can be effective on depression symptoms. Therefore, a study aimed to determine the effect of cognitive behavioral therapy on the depression of people attempting to commit suicide who were discharged from medical education centers in Urmia in 2020.

This semi-experimental study was conducted on 60 participants who tried to commit suicide and were discharged from medical centers in Urmia City, Iran, in 2020. With the convenience sampling method, 60 people were selected from the suicide attempters and then randomly and equally assigned to control and intervention groups. The short form of Beck depression questionnaire and demographic questionnaire were used to collect data before the intervention, immediately after the intervention, and three months after the intervention. The training package for the intervention group was held during eight sessions of 60-90 minutes with a frequency of two sessions per week. No intervention was done for the control group. Data collected by SPSS software (22) were analyzed through Chi-square statistical test, Fisher's exact test and Repeated Measure ANOVA.

The results showed that there was a significant difference between the intervention and control groups in the trend of depression scores of the suicide attempters discharged from the treatment centers (P<0.001). The pairwise comparisons based on the Bonferroni test showed no statistically significant difference concerning the depression score of people attempting to commit suicide discharged from medical centers in the control group in the periods before and after the intervention (p=0.001). However, there was a statistically significant difference between the periods before, after, and three months after the intervention in the intervention group (P<0.001).

In this study, the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy was observed in the intervention group, and the symptoms of depression improved significantly. Therefore, it could be concluded that cognitive behavioral therapy may have a significant improvement in reducing suicidal thoughts and despair. In addition, this treatment can positively affect a person's behavior and improve the quality of his/her life. However, more studies are needed to measure the exact effectiveness.