Effectiveness of rumination-focused cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy on cognitive emotion regulation and negative beliefs of depressed adolescents attempting suicide

Depression in adolescence under the influence of negative cognitions and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies can significantly impair performance and lead to harmful behaviors such as suicide attempts; Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of Rumination-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (RFCBT) versus Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) on cognitive emotion regulation and negative depression-related beliefs among depressed girls who attempted suicide.

This study was quasi-experimental with a control group and two-month follow-up period. Thirty-three depressed adolescent girls who had referred to the emergency department with suicide attempting from October 23, 2019 to March 5, 2020, after having the inclusion criteria, were selected with targeted sampling method. Then, participants were randomly divided into three groups (two experimental groups of 10 and a control group of 13). One group received RFCBT and the other group received MBCT in ten individual sessions. The Beck Depression Inventory-II, Depression-Related Beliefs Scale and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire were employed as research instrument. Analyses of the data were made using SPSS version 16 software followed by analysis of variance with repeated measures.

The finding showed that both methods had a significant effect on reducing depression, depression-related beliefs, maladaptive strategies of cognitive emotion regulation and increasing adaptive strategies at the time of post-test (p <0.001) and follow-up (p <0.05) compared to pre-test. The results were stable during the two-month follow-up period in each intervention group compared to the post-test period (p> 0.05).

The results support the effectiveness of two methods of rumination-focused cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy without superiority over each other, in better use of cognitive emotion regulation strategies, and decreasing the negative depression-related beliefs. Therefore, planning for the use of both methods by therapists to improve the psychological health of adolescents with depression is suggested; However, strong conclusions about rumination-focused cognitive behavioral therapy require further research in the future and a larger statistical population.