The effectiveness of time-perspective therapy on cognitive abilities, emotion regulation and alexithymia in depressed teenager girls

 Depressed people are faced with problems in cognitive abilities,emotion regulation and alexithymia.According to previous studies, time perspective as a person's view of his past, present, and personal futurecan help him in improving his cognitive abilities and emotion regulation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of time horizon therapy on cognitive abilities, emotion regulation and alexithymia in depressed teenagers in Yazd.

Statistical population of the quasi-experimental present study include all yazd’s depressed teenaged depressed girl.21 of depressed teenaged girl were purposefully chosen and randolmly were assigned in one interval group (8members) and one control group(13members). The Emotional Regulation Scale (Graz and Roemer, 2004), the Toronto Alexithymia Scale(TAS) (Bagby, Parker, & Taylor, 1994) and the Cognitive Ability Questionnaire (Nejati, 2013) were used to collect research data.
The interval group participated in time perspective program, six 60-minute sessions, twice a week, while the control group was placed on a waiting list. Also, post hoc test was performed to evaluate the stability of the results two months after the training.Statistics data were analyzed using analysis of variance method with repetitive measurement in SPSS_25 software.

Findings showed that Time-perspective therapy has a significant effect on increasing cognitive ability and emotional regulation and reducing alexithymia in depressed female teenaged girls (p <0.05). But effects of intervention just about cognitive ability variable was permanent over the time.(p<0.05).

The results showed that the time perspective program by focusing on factors such as active time managing can have a permanent and ideal effects on cognitive ability.