An Overview on the Experimental Situation of Psychotherapy in Iran

In Iran, More than 300 researches about psychotherapy have been published. The aim of the study was to answer these questions: what is the most common approach to psychotherapy?How much is the effect size of therapy interventions during treatment and its follow-ups? This study has reviewed nearly 77 researches in order to answer those questions. This study was applied the qualitative and meta-analytical methodology. To analyze the data and determine the power of interventions, the effect size formula was used. Also, the one-way ANOVA was applied to compare the efficiency of psychotherapies. The findings showed that in Iran, during the years 1379 to 1389 (and until 1392 for spiritual therapies), the effect size of all reported interventions were in a medium level (from 0.5 to 0.8). The most common approach to psychotherapy was cognitive-behavioral. 11 researches fallowed up the effect of interventions and the total effect size of interventions in follow-ups was in a low level 0.49). There was not a meaningful difference between religious and spiritual therapies (mostly in combination with usual therapies).