Comparison of the Effectiveness of Resilience Training and Self-compassion Training on the General Health and Academic Burnout in Students with Depression Symptoms

Depression as a common mental disorder can seriously damage the academic procedure and psychological state of the students. This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of resilience training and elf-compassion training on the general health and academic burnout in students with depression symptoms.

This study was a quasi-experimental research with pretest-posttest control group design. The population included all the male students studying at the first cycle of the secondary schools in Parsabad city (Ardabil province) in the academic year 2017-2018 (N= 2028). A sample of 60 students with depression symptoms was selected through multi-stage cluster sampling and randomly assigned to three groups (n=20). Data were collected by Depression Self-rating Scale (Birleson, 1981), General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg & Hillier, 1979) and Academic Burnout Questionnaire (Bresochr('39'), Salanova, & Schaufeli, 2007) and then analyzed by ANCOVA through using SPSS Version 20.

Data analysis showed that both resilience and self-compassion training were effective in improving the components of general health and reducing the academic burnout in students with depression symptoms (P≤0.05). Also, based on the follow-up test results, resilience training was more effective than self-compassion training in decreasing the academic exhaustion (P≤0.05).

The results showed that both methods used in this study were effective in improving the general health and reducing the academic burnout. However, due to the increase of flexibility and optimism, relisence training was more effective in reducing the academic exhaustion.