The way of ending the conversation in the therapeutic discourse of the clients with generalized anxiety disorder

Therapeutic discourse is a special type of organizational discourse that is used in patients' psychotherapy. The present study seeks to find the principles of how to end conversations in a therapeutic situation using the conversation analysis approach. In particular, it examines therapeutic discourse of treatment sessions for patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) based on the Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) approach. The method used in this research is based on the logic of qualitative research. The linguistic corpus used in this research included the last 10 minutes of conversations of 252 psychotherapy sessions. Participants in this study were selected from both genders. To analyze the data, methods of conversation analysis, word counting and finding keywords in the text have been used. Also, ATLAS t.i. computer software has been used to construct and present the verbal pattern. The results of this study show that in all sessions, the psychotherapist has announced the end of the conversation due to his/her active nature in the psychotherapy sessions. The application of all techniques related to the completion of conversations was in accordance with the principles and foundations of psychotherapy interviews. Also, the use of goodbye terms has originated from the culture of Iranian society.