The Effectiveness of Online Training on Cognitive Behavioral and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to Reduce self-regulation, Aggressive Behavior, and Self-Harm Among Students

Teenagers nowadays face a variety of physical, psychological, and social issues. Psychotherapeutic interventions may respond to the crises created at this time. The aim of the present study was to compare the effectiveness of two types of online interventional therapy (cognitive-behavioral and emotion regulation therapy) on students’ commitment to emotion-regulation and reduction of aggressive behavior and self-harm. This pretest posttest experimental study was performed on 60 adolescent students with self-harm who referred to the emergency unit of Zahedan hospital from October 2021 to January 2021. Using simple random sampling, we selected 60 students in three groups (20 students treated with online training of cognitivebehavioral education, 20 students with online training of acceptance and commitment therapy, and 20 students formed the control group). Cognitive-behavioral therapy sessions were conducted in 12 one-hour sessions and acceptance and commitment-based therapy sessions were conducted in eight 90-minute sessions, twice a week. The instruments of the research were validated questionnaires including Emotion Cognitive Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ), Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (AGQ), and Self-Harm Inventory Scale (SHI) The results showed that Cognitive-behavioral Therapy had a significant effect on the students’ self-regulation (P=0.01), Aggressive behavior (P=0.01), and Self-Harm (P=0.01). The results showed that acceptance and commitment therapy had a significant effect on the students’ self-regulation (P=0.001), Aggressive behavior (P=0.001), and Self-harm (P=0.001). The effectiveness of online training of acceptance and commitment therapy was higher than online training of cognitivebehavioral therapy in reducing self-harm among the students. Thus, in training programs for the teenagers, it is suggested that acceptance and commitment therapy should be used