The effectiveness of compassion-focused therapy on emotional maturity and feelings of shame in girls with premenstrual syndrome

The present study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of compassion-focused therapy on emotional maturity and feelings of shame in girls with premenstrual syndrome. The current research was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design and a control group with a follow-up period of two months. The statistical population of this research included all female students of the first secondary schools of Mashhad city who were studying in the academic year of 2023; 30 students were selected in a judgmental sampling and were assigned to two experimental (15 people) and control (15 people) groups by simple random sampling. Emotional Maturity Scale (EMS; Singh and Bhargava, 1988) and Guilt and Shame Proneness Scale (GASP; Cohen et al., 2011) were used to collect data. The members of the intervention group received compassion-focused therapy during 8 sessions. To analyze the data, repeated measurement variance analysis was used. The results showed that there is a significant difference between the groups in the post-test and follow-up of emotional maturity and feeling of shame (p<0.05) and the treatment focused on compassion had a lasting effect in the follow-up period (p<0.05). In general, it can be concluded that the treatment focused on compassion has been an effective treatment for improving emotional maturity and reducing the feeling of shame in girls with premenstrual syndrome.