Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy on decrease of symptoms of depression, rumination and emotion regulation in pregnant women

The purpose of the present study was to determine the effectiveness of Mindedness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) on reducing the symptoms of depression, rumination, and emotion regulation in pregnant women. A quasi-experimental design with pre-test, post-test and a one month followup with control group was used. The statistical population included 500 pregnant women referred to health centers in the town of Ghorveh in Sanandaj province in Iran who were one to six months pregnant. Through available sampling method, 263 women who met the inclusion criteria were selected and out if these, 30 participants were randomly assigned to two groups of MBCT or control. Research tools were Beck’s (1996) Depression Inventory- II, Rumination Response Scale (Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1991), Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003) and the MBCT program which was adapted from Segal, Williams, & Teasdale (2018) and Dimidjian, Goodman, Felder, Gallop, Brown, & Beck (2016). This was administered to the experimental group during eight weekly, 90-minute sessions and collected data was analyzed using mixed model repeated measures analysis of variance. Findings showed that MBCT had a significant effect on improving depression symptoms (F= 55.06, P= 0.001), rumination (F= 25.88, P= 0.001), and emotion regulation subscales including cognitive reappraisal (F= 9.27, P= 0.02), and suppression (F= 4.69, P= 0.036), and treatment gains were maintained at follow-up. This method can be used as a low-cost and effective treatment for the treatment of emotional disorders and improving the psychological status of pregnant women.