The Effectiveness of Self-Healing Approach on Cognitive Distortions and Interpersonal Forgiveness of Women with Psychological Distress

The purpose of this study was the determination of the effectiveness of self-healing approach on cognitive distortions and interpersonal forgiveness of women with psychological distress.

This study was a quasi-experimental study with two groups (experimental group and control group) in two stages (pre-test and post-test) and it was performed on the women of the Counseling Center of Isfahan Second District in the second half of 1399 (solar year). 60 individuals were diagnosed with the psychological distress and for this purpose, 40 individuals who were eligible to participate in the study, were selected by using random sampling and randomly they were assigned to the experimental and control groups. Research instruments included the questionnaires of the psychological distress (Kessler, 2002), cognitive distortions (Hamam Chi and Boyuk, 2004) and interpersonal forgiveness (Ehtesham Zadeh, 2010). The experimental group received fourteen sessions of 90 minutes of self-healing training and the control group did not receive any training. Multivariate analysis of covariance was used in order to analyze the data.

The results of the present study demonstrated that the self-healing approach had a significant effect on the cognitive distortions and forgiveness of women with psychological distress (p<0.001).

It is recommended to pay more attention to education in families due to its effectiveness in improving the psychological health of women with psychological distress, as well as increasing the forgiveness and reducing the cognitive distortions.