The efficacy of the emotion regulation intervention on coping styles in patients with alexithymia

Background and Alexithymia that is known as a kind of insufficiency in emotion regulation is a dangerous factor for many mental disorders. This study is conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of emotion regulation intervention on coping styles in patients with the symptoms of alexithymia.
The research method is experimental with the pretest – post-test and control group. The study population has included the B.A students of Kharazmi University in the year 2014. The study sample has been consisted of 40 students who had the symptoms of alexithymia in the Kharazmi University in the year 2014; these students in the scale of alexithymia have been scored higher than 60 and during the interviews they have been approved in terms having the symptoms of alexithymia and the lack of accompanying symptoms. Then, by getting their permission, these people have been randomly assigned in two intervention and control groups (N =20). But with the primary reduction of the sample, the number of participants in each group has been reduced to 12 people. The intervention group has been trained in 8 sessions of emotion regulation intervention training that each session has been lasted for 90 minutes per week. But the control group did not receive any training programs. The research tools have been consisted of the Tehran Coping Styles Inventory of Karvar et al (1989) and Toronto alexithymia of Besharat (2007). After collecting the data, in addition to using the descriptive statistics, the covariance analysis has been used to analyze the data.
The data analysis has shown that the emotion regulation intervention will significantly increase the use of problem-focused coping style (p According to the results of this study, the emotion regulation intervention can be an effective method to improve the problems that are associated with alexithymia in the patients who have alexithymia, and it can be considered as a preventive intervention to prevent the bigger problems of the people who have alexithymia.