The effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy on autobiographical memories, cognitive avoidance and cognitive emotion regulation in patients with major depression

Some cognitive and emotional reactions in depressed people have been suggested as predictors of depression. Therefore, it is necessary to identify, evaluate and treat the factors that can contribute to these cognitive and emotional reactions. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) on autobiographical memories, cognitive avoidance and cognitive emotion regulation in patients with major depression.

The present research was conducted in the form of a semi-experimental pre-test-post-test design with a control group. Among the people with major depressive disorder referring to zhuan clinic in Tehran, 40 people were selected using convenience sampling method and randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. The experimental group received 8 sessions of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, while the control group did not receive any specific intervention. Williams and Broadbent Autobiographical memory test, Sexton and Dugas cognitive avoidance questionnaire, Garnefsky et al.'s cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire were administered in the pre-test and post-test stages on two groups and the obtained findings were analyzed using multivariate covariance in SPSS-21.

There is a significant difference between the two experimental and control groups in the components of autobiographical memories, cognitive avoidance and cognitive emotion regulation, in the post-test stage (P<0.01), which means that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy training significantly improves autobiographical memories (F=11.409, P=0.002), reduces cognitive avoidance (F=10.575, sig=0.003), reducing maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies (F=9.272, P=0.010), and increasing adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies (F=8.202, P=0.025) has an effect in the post-test stage.

These preliminary findings support the role of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in improving the recall of autobiographical memories, reducing cognitive avoidance, reducing maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies, and increasing adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies. It is suggested that future research should pay more attention to the role of MBCT in improving these components in depressed patients.