Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy on the amount of using Defense Mechanisms of patients with Major Depressive Disorder

Major depression disorder is one of the chronic and disabling disorder that affects the ability to experience healthy mood and causing impairment in the biological and environmental performance of an individual. Effective factors should be known, recognized, and treated or controlled. One of the most influential factors is defense mechanisms, which is involved in the onset and recurrence of this disorder. Defense mechanisms are ways and means by which ego relieve anxiety, resentment, control instinctive, and impulsive behavior. Defense mechanisms are unconscious measure for control of stress. However, due to their self–deception nature, sometimes–unclear mechanisms that are practically inconsistent with adaptive behavior and this is reflected in the behavior of people with mood and anxiety disorders. It is assumed that one of the main reasons for vulnerability versus recurrence and the return of mood disorders are due to frequent links between depressed mood and abusive patterns of unconscious and fluid growth mechanisms, which in turn leads to changes in cognitive and neurological levels. One of the new therapies used for major depressive disorder is mindfulness–based cognitive therapy. Mindfulness–based cognitive therapy is designed to reduce the relapse of depression. It seems that cognitive therapy based on mind–consciousness, by persuading a person to practice to pay attention to the characteristics of the experiences in an unjustified way. The method has led to a more thought logical by increasing the individual's awareness of the experiences of the present moment (for example, by focusing on breathing) and returning attention to the current time. The method has affected the cognitive system and is efficient information processing, which in their turn reduces the immature and neurotic defense mechanisms. In other words, it increases the use of mature mechanisms. For the same reason, the purpose of the present study was to determine the effectiveness of mindfulness–based cognitive therapy on the use of defense mechanisms of people with depression.

The study was semi–experimental in the type of pre–test and post–test with the control group. A total of 40 patients with major depressive disorder selected that their disease according to psychiatrics’ opinion and DSM–5 had been diagnosed. They were divided randomly into experimental (20 depressive patients) and control (20 depressive patients) groups. The dependent variable included results of defense mechanisms, which measured in the intervention and control groups in similar condition. The used protocol included mindfulness–based cognitive therapy of Segal, Williams, and Teasdale. For execution, first, of both groups by using defense mechanisms (DSQ 40) questionnaire pre–test was taken. Then, the experimental group at eight sessions trained with Mindfulness–based cognitive therapy and after finishing sessions, both groups were taken post–test, and two months later follow–up test was conducted. To analysis data,   Analysis of variance with repeated measurements was used.

Mindfulness–based cognitive therapy caused reduction using immature (F=57.013, p<0.001) and neurotic (F=37.684, p<0.001) defense mechanisms in patients suffering from major depression in the experimental group. Also, the use amount of mature mechanisms after the implementation of treatment increased significantly (F=197.848, p<0.001) in the experimental group.

Based on the study results, it predicts that mindfulness–based cognitive therapy will play an essential role in treating mental disorders and prevention of the onset and relapse of these disorders.