The effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral group counseling on general health of female high school students in the first secondary level

The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral group counseling on increasing the general health of female students. The current study is a semi-experimental type in which a pre-test and post-test design was used with an experimental group and a control group. The statistical population of the research was made up of all female high school students in the first secondary level of Marand city, and among them, 30 people (15 people each in the experimental and control groups) were selected by purposive sampling and randomly replaced in the experimental and control groups. In this research, the 28-question general health questionnaire of Goldberg and Hiller (1979) was used to collect information. Data analysis using multivariate covariance analysis method showed: teaching cognitive-behavioral approach in a group manner increases students' social functioning and significantly reduces their symptoms of depression, anxiety and physical symptoms (P≤ 0.05). It is concluded that cognitive-behavioral therapy can be well used and effective in order to increase the general health of students due to the cultural closeness with the Iranian society.