The effectiveness of integrative psychodynamic group psychotherapy on Ego Function in depression desorder

One of the problems of depressed people is the inability to self-knowledge and one of the possibly effective treatments in this field is therapies based on a psychoanalytic approach. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of integrated psychodynamic group therapy on integrative self-knowledge in depressed patients. This study was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design and follow-up with a control group. The statistical population of this study was women referring to the Belagh clinic in Qom. Among them, 32 patients (16 with major depression and 16 with Dysthymia) were purposefully selected and randomly divided into control and experimental groups. Subjects completed the Integrative Self- Knowledge Scale (Qorbani, 2008) in the pre-test and post-test stages. The experimental group was treated with the integrated psychodynamic group therapy protocol for 24 sessions (120 minutes per week) and the control group did not receive any intervention. Analysis of covariance was used to analyze the data. The results showed that the integrated psychodynamic group therapy significantly increased the integrated self-knowledge in the experimental group compared to the control group (P <0.01). Therefore, integrated psychodynamic group therapy can be used to increase self-knowledge in depressed people.