The Effectiveness of Metacognitive Therapy on Depression in Male Students Aged 13 to 18 in Divorced Families

The increase in divorce rates in recent decades and its impact on adolescents has highlighted psychological damages, such as depression in research studies. Therefore, the researcher conducted the current study to determine the effectiveness of Meta-cognitive therapy in decreasing depression in male students aged 13 to 18 from divorced families.

This study was semi-experimental research with a pre-test, post-test, follow-up, and control group. The study's statistical population included boys between the ages of 13 to 18 years old in 2 high schools in the 5th district of Tehran in the academic year of 2021-2022. The researcher selected thirty participants through convenience sampling and randomly assigned them to an intervention group and a control group (each group consisted of 15 individuals). Then, the researcher provided Meta-cognitive therapy for the intervention group in 90-minute sessions, weekly for two months. However, the control group did not receive any intervention. Finally, the researcher assessed the participants in three stages: pre-test, post-test, and follow-up using the Adolescent Depression Questionnaire (Maria Kovacs, 1979). In order to analyse data, this study used mixed analysis of variance with repeated measures through SPSS version 26.

The results showed that Meta-cognitive therapy had a positive effect on depression (p<0.001). The post-test average scores were 30.57 for the control group and 16.87 for the intervention group. In the intervention group, there was no significant difference between the depression post-test average scores at 16.87 and the follow-up, at 17.60 (p>0.05).

The results of the study showed that Meta-cognitive therapy was an effective intervention in male students aged 13 to 18 from divorced families. The researcher recommends the use of this therapeutic approach to decrease depression.