The Effect of Mindfulness based Cognitive Therapy on the Students Attribution Styles of with Major Depressive Disorders

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of mindfulness based of cognitive therapy on the student's attribution styles of with major depressive disorder. The research method was quasi-experimental with pretest-posttest design and follow-up with the control group. First, 410 individual female students completed the Beck-II Depression Inventory by screening test. Those who achieved a standard deviation above the mean of the group received a structured clinical interview. Then, 24 participants with major depression and inclusion criteria were randomly assigned to two groups of 4 in each experiment. The instrument of measurement in this study was Beck Depression Inventory - II and Attribution Style of Seligman and Singh. The experimental group underwent 8 sessions of 2-hour sessions of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. At the end of the intervention, post-test and two months after the intervention, the control and experimental groups were followed up. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential tests including univariate and multivariate analysis of covariance. The results showed that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy significantly increased the attribution style of events with good outcome and decreased the attribution style of events with bad outcome. These results were consistent at the follow-up stage. Based on the results of this study, it is suggested that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy intervention be used to reduce the level of pessimistic attribution style and to increase the optimistic attribution style of female students with major depression.