Comparing the Effectiveness of Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Metacognitive Therapy on Attachment Styles and Dimensions of Identity Transformation in Adolescents

 Adolescence is a critical period of social, psychological, and physical development. Adolescents make important choices about health, growth, attitudes, and health behaviors that will affect their adulthood. Therefore, this research was conducted to compare the effectiveness of dialectical behavior therapy and metacognitive therapy on attachment styles and dimensions of identity transformation in adolescents.

 This semi-experimental study was performed with a pretest-posttest follow-up design and a control group. The research population included all adolescent girls aged 13 to 16 years in District 1 of Baharestan City who were studying in the seventh to tenth grades in the academic year of 2022-2023 and were referred to the education counseling center in 2022. Out of this population, three groups of 20 people were selected using the availability sampling method and randomly divided into experimental and control groups. The required data were collected through Hazan and Shaver's (1987) Attachment Styles Questionnaire and Berzonsky’s Identity Style Inventory (1992) in three pre-test, post-test, and follow-up stages. The subjects in the experimental groups underwent dialectical behavior therapy and metacognitive therapy in one 60-minute session per week; however, the control group received no training. The data were statistically analyzed in SPSS software using the repeated measures ANOVA. The significant level was considered < 0.05.

The results were indicative of the significant effects of dialectical behavior therapy and metacognitive therapy on attachment styles (P=0.017) and the dimensions of identity transformation (P=0.023).

According to the results of this research, the goal of dialectical behavior therapy and metacognition therapy was to increase behaviors that would probably lead to a safe and healthy attachment style and healthy identity transformation in adolescents, and these rewards are internal or external.