Effectiveness of Emotion-Focused Therapy on Internalizing Symptoms among Teen Boy Victims of Bullying

Aims: Internalizing Symptoms are associated with negative consequences such as reduced performance interpersonal, drug abuse and academic problems. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of emotion-focused therapy on internalizing symptoms among teen boy victims of bullying.
This quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest design with control group was performed in all students of boy’s middle schools in Bukan, Iran, in the academic year of 2015-2016. Using cluster sampling, 30 people who scored more in the victims of bullying questionnaire were selected and randomly assigned to two groups of experiment and control (each of 15 people).
Findings: The overall index of internalization symptoms in the pre-test stage in the experimental and control groups were 23.90±4.60 and 24.40±4.06, respectively. These values in the posttest were 14.50±4.12 and 24.60±3.40, respectively (p=0.0001). In addition, emotion-focused treatment significantly decreased the subscales of internalization symptoms (p=0.0001).
Emotion-focused therapy is effective on internalizing symptoms among teen boy victims of bullying.