The efficacy of emotional memory management training package on social adjustment in women and men with depressive symptoms

One of the most common mood disorders is depression. This disorder always leads to disruption of social adaptation and daily life performance of people. Emotional memory management, as a method based on regulating emotions, is one of the accepted methods for improving many psychological disorders, including depression. Despite the use of emotional memory management training in various researches, limited studies have investigated the effectiveness of emotional memory management training on the social adjustment of women and men with depression symptoms.

The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effectiveness of the emotional memory management training package on the social adjustment of women and men with depressive symptoms.

The current research design was a semi-experimental pre-test-post-test type with a control group and a three-month follow-up. The statistical population of the research included all the male and female employees of the Ports and Maritime Organization and the army navy employees and their families living in Tehran, who had referred to a counseling center in Tehran during the years 2017 to 2018 due to depression. The statistical sample was selected among the people of the statistical population in an accessible and purposeful way and randomly divided into two groups of 30 people, Experimental and control (15 men and 15 women in each group). The experimental group participated in emotional memory management training sessions (a program compiled by the researcher) for 12 sessions of 75 minutes, and the control group was not given any training during this period. Social adjustment (Bell, 1961) and depression (Beck et al., 1996) questionnaires were used to collect data. To analyze the data, the analysis of variance test with repeated measurements was used, and SPSS version 25 was used for statistical calculations.

The research findings showed that emotional memory management package training has a positive and significant effect on the social adjustment of depressed men and women. Also, there is a significant difference between the mean social adjustment scores of pre-test, post-test and follow-up (P<0.001).

According to the obtained results, it seems that in the emotional memory management training program, people learn how to interact with each other, express their emotions appropriately, and correct their emotional expression problems. Therefore, by increasing the capacity of emotional and communication knowledge, people's social adjustment is improved.