The effectiveness of compassion-focused therapy on thought fusion, ambivalence over emotional expression, and impulsivity in married individuals with a history of suicide

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of compassion-focused therapy on thought fusion, ambivalence over emotional expression and impulsivity in married individuals with a history of suicide. This study was applied in terms of purpose and quasi-experimental in terms of method with pre-test and post-test design and control group. The population of this study includes all married individuals with a history of suicide whose disease was diagnosed by a specialist in the second half of 2020 to May 2021 referring to psychiatric centers in Sari to receive medical services. In this study, purposive non-random sampling was used. First, 50 individuals from the population were selected of whom 30 individuals were selected as a sample based on their scores in the questionnaires, and by random assignment, 15 individuals were placed in the experimental group and 15 individuals in the control group. Data collection included both library and field methods. In order to collect data, questionnaires of Beck Suicide (1961), Ambivalence over Emotional Expression (King & Emmons, 1990), Impulsivity (Barratt et al., 2004), and Thought fusion (Wells et al., 2001) were employed. Due to the standardization of questionnaires, their face validity was approved by the supervisors and consultants. The participants in the experimental groups received eight sessions of 70 minutes and two sessions per week for one month of compassion-focused therapy training interventions based on Gilbert (2018) treatment plan, while the control group did not receive any intervention. Data analysis was performed according to the assumptions and using SPSS software version 24, i.e. ANOVA and MANCOVA. The results showed that compassion-focused therapy is effective in thought fusion, ambivalence over emotional expression and impulsivity in married individuals with a history of suicide.