The Effectiveness of Group Semantic Therapy on Tolerating Ambiguity and Concerns about Body Image and Metacognitive Beliefs in the Women with Depression Symptoms

 Depressive disorder is the second major health condition in the world. It has affected over 350 million people so far and the share of women is twice that of men. Group semantic therapy can be used as a new treatment for the depressed women with low ambiguity tolerance, concerns about body image and few metacognitive beliefs. The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of group semantic therapy on tolerating ambiguity and concerns about body image and metacognitive beliefs in the women with depression symptoms.

 The present research is a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest control group design. Among the target statistical population, 30 women with depression symptoms in Borujerd were randomly placed into two groups: Intervention (15) and control (15). Ten sessions of group Semantic therapy were held for the intervention group. The research tools consisted of Sweden et al’s Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (IUS), Littleton et al’s Body Image Concern Inventory (BICI) and Wells' metacognitive beliefs questionnaire. The tools were completed by the intervention group in both pretest and posttest stages. The data were analyzed using variance analysis method in SPSS 26 software.

Ethical Considerations:

 The research objectives were explained to the participants and data confidentiality was ensured. Then informed consent was obtained from the participants.

 The results showed that group semantic therapy has significant effects on tolerating ambiguity (F=14.6, P<0.05) and concerns about body image (F=11.7, P<0.05) and metacognitive beliefs (F=5.6, P<0.05) in the women with depression symptoms (p-value<0.05).

 According to the results of this study, performing group semantic therapy can give meaning to individuals’ lives, increase their tolerance and metacognitive beliefs and reduce their concerns about body image. Therefore, planning to promote such training for the depressed is essential.