Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies Training on Psychological Problems of Depression, Anxiety and Stress in Deaf Students

Hearing impairment is a prevalent neurosensory condition which leads to decreased life quality, withdrawal, social activities reduction, and rejection feelings. Additionally, decreased emotion regulation in hearing–impaired children and adolescents could sometimes increase their psychological problems. It is important to plan appropriate training programs for improving depression, anxiety, and stress in hearing–impaired children and adolescents. The cognitive emotion regulation strategies training program is one of such interventions. This program pays excellent attention to psychological problems, including depression, anxiety, and stress. The cognitive emotion regulation strategies training program could decrease psychological problems in hearing–impaired students. This is because hearing–impaired children and adolescents face numerous challenges in this respect. Undoubtedly, inappropriate emotional reactions lead to psychological issues, such as depression, anxiety, and stress in deaf children and adolescents. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine the effects of cognitive emotion regulation strategies training on depression, anxiety, and stress in hearing–impaired students.

This was a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest and a control group design. The study participants were 28 female hearing–impaired students aged 16–20 years from the hearing–impaired school of Mir in Isfahan City, Iran, in the 2018–2019 academic year. The study samples were selected by convenience sampling method. They were from the middle socioeconomic class. The study participants were randomly divided into the experimental and control groups, each group consisting of 14 students. The experimental group participated in cognitive emotion regulation strategies training program for 8 sessions (two 50–min sessions weekly); however, the control group received no intervention and remained in the waiting list. The Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS) of Lobivand and Lobivand (1995) were used for data collection. The DASS was completed by hearing–impaired students in pretest and posttest phases. In other words, the required data were collected through this scale before and after conducting the training sessions. Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) was used in SPSS to analyze the achieved data. (p<0.05).

Initially, the normality of variables and contingency of variance and covariance assumptions were tested. The Kolmogorov Smirnov test results suggested that all variables were normally distributed. Furthermore, Box test results confirmed the contingency of variance–covariance assumption. Accordingly, the assumptions of MANCOVA were proved and this test could be used for data analysis. The MANCOVA data revealed a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of depression, anxiety, and stress in the post–test stage (p<0.001). The MANCOVA results indicated that the cognitive emotion regulation strategies training program significantly impacted depression, anxiety, and stress in the investigated students (p<0.001). Cognitive emotion regulation strategies training program improved depression, anxiety, and stress in hearing–impaired students. According to the Eta squared, 62%, 57%, and 60% of variations of depression, anxiety, and stress could respectively be explained by the study subjects’ participation in the cognitive emotion regulation strategies training program.

The cognitive emotion regulation strategies training program improved depression, anxiety, and stress in the studied hearing–impaired students. In other words, applying this training program was associated with effective and positive outcomes. This conclusion is based on the depression, anxiety, and stress score of the control group, which remained without significant improvements. Therefore, paying attention to the cognitive emotion regulation strategies training program is essential, and planning for providing training of this type of program for the children and students with hearing impairments is of particular importance.