A comparative analysis of the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy and hypnotherapy on improving emotional regulation and communication skills of adolescents with oppositional defiant disorder

Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) is one of the crucial disorders in childhood and adolescence which is externalizing spectrum disorders.

The purpose of this study was to investigate of the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy and hypnotherapy on improving emotional regulation and communication skills of adolescents with oppositional defiant disorder.

This research has been executed in context of a clinical trial plan with pre-test and post-test and one-month follow up period. Among the students with oppositional defiant disorder of junior school in Urmia city who were studying in the (school) year 2020- 2021 that 51 people were purposefully selected and placed randomly in three groups (17 people for cognitive-behavioral therapy, 17 people for hypnotherapy and 17 people for control) with the assistance of schools’ teachers and principals, parents and utilizing diagnostic interviews and also supplying the inclusion criteria in research. Then cognitive- behavioral therapy and hypnotherapy group has intervened based on intervention stranded protocols but members of the control group did not receive any intervention. After the end of a month, a follow-up test was performed and the research scales were used again. Tools of this research included: Child Behavioral Checklist (CBCL), Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) and the communication skills inventory. SPSS-22 software and repeated measures analysis of variance were used to analyze the data.

The results of this research indicated that both cognitive-behavioral therapy and hypnotherapy improve communication (F=1.53, P>0.224) and adaptive emotion regulation skills (F=2.45, P>0.575) and reduction of maladaptive emotion regulation skills (F=2.56, P>0.127) were equally affected and there was no significant difference between them.

The results of this study signify that both hypnotherapy and cognitive- behavioral therapy can be effective equally in improving emotion regulation and communication skills and these investigations can be used to cope with adolescents with oppositional defiant disorder.