Avicenna Journal of Neuro Psycho Physiology
Volume:5 Issue: 1, Feb 2018

This article has no abstract.

Psychotherapy endows a sense of control in patients gripped with emotional conflicts; it allows them to handle their reflexes and regain composure through conscious and behavioral alterations. These transformational changes can be brought about by improving their listening skills, observational capacities, creating awareness, and making them more attentive and intervening. Conventional psychotherapy calls for one-to-one sessions during treatment. Considering the increased access to Information Technology (IT) in our daily living, the idea of replacement of human interaction by IT tools appeared. The specialized tools and techniques are employed through the course of therapy, which not only alters but also accentuates their cognitive and practical understanding. The idea of amalgamating these two broad ambits, the complexities of psychology and dynamism of Artificial Intelligence (AI), has gained momentum in recent years. The reluctance of a few psychologists in the past regarding inculcating expert systems into routine practice, because of employment-related insecurities or being swapped by a computer, led to the underutilization of the latent competence of using IT. Primarily, human behavior itself cannot be copied in totality by technology, and AI has a great deal to cover in this regards, but researchers are doing their best to deliver on these premises. Apart from this patient, resistance to this encroachment of technology should be critically investigated for gaining acceptance. This review focuses on how machine intelligence can enhance self-awareness through computer-implemented psychotherapeutic tools.

The comorbidity of generalized anxiety and major depressive disorders and the challenges of distress disorders create a model such as emotion dysregulation.  The present study aimed at examining the emotion dysregulation model of distress symptoms in a community sample. A total of 508 individuals were recruited from a community sample, using convenience sampling method. The participants filled in the questionnaires that assess their safety motivation and emotional intensity, emotion regulation strategies (attentional control, acceptance, decentering, and reappraisal), and distress symptoms (depression, generalized anxiety symptoms, worry, and rumination). The structural equation modeling was used to assess the fitness model. The model yielded a good fitness (χ2=64.51, df=26, χ2/df=2.48, P<0.001, CFI=0.97, GFI=0.97, PCFI=0.56, and RMSEA=0.05). The emotion dysregulation model of distress symptoms has an acceptable fitness. The mediating role of emotion regulation strategies in this model highlights the important effects of emotion regulation abilities in protecting individuals suffering from distress symptoms.

The ability of communication is one of the critical features, which helps exceptional children to achieve an independent life. Therefore, using educational methods that enhance these abilities in these children is very important and necessary.  This study aimed to investigate the effect of storytelling on the communication skills of educable mentally-retarded students in Ahvaz City, Iran. This is a quasi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test design with a control group. A sample of 30 mentally-retarded students, who were studying in exceptional schools of Ahvaz, was selected by a multistage cluster sampling method. Then, they were divided into experimental (n=15) and control (n=15) groups. Subjects in both groups completed the pre-test and post-test communication skills questionnaire, and only the experimental group underwent the tale program. The obtained data were analyzed by covariance analysis. The results of this study showed that the mean scores of Dan’s communication skills. There was a significant difference between the students in terms of group membership (experimental group and control group) in the post-test (P=0.001).  The storytelling method based on the communication skills of low-income students’ educational mentality was effective and the experimental group trained by the storytelling method achieved higher post-test scores in communication skills.

  Substance abuse is one of the most common psychiatric problems in the world. It results from the interaction of genetic and environmental factors with unfavorable psychosocial statuses. The present study aimed to compare psychological hardiness between individuals with and without Substance Use Disorder (SUD) in Hamadan City, Iran. The present causal-comparative study was conducted on 200 people (individuals with and without SUD) referring to substance abuse treatment centers in Hamadan, during 2016. The participants were selected by the stratified random sampling method. The required data were collected by the Ahvaz Psychological Hardiness Questionnaire and analyzed by the independent-samples t-test. The results indicated a significant difference in psychological hardiness among participants with and without SUD. Accordingly, the psychological hardiness of the participants with SUD was generally lower than that of the participants without SUD (t=3.33, df=198, P-value of the first column <0.05, P-value of the Levene’s test =0.37). Psychological hardiness is statistically different in individuals with and without SUD.

Job involvement is an essential factor and an attitude contributing to the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization. Job involvement is based on how employees perceive their work environment, job, and its combination with personal life; its low level among the employees would reduce performance at different levels of the organization. The present study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of group counseling based on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) on the job involvement of employees in Islamic Azad University of Gorgan, Gorgan City, Iran. The present study was quasi-experimental and used a pre-test and post-test design with a control group. The population of this research consisted of all administrative employees (other than faculty members) of the Islamic Azad University of Gorgan, Iran, in the 2017-2018 academic year. Among them, 24 individuals were randomly selected and assigned to the experimental and control groups (12 participants in each group). The Job Involvement Questionnaire (1979) was used for assessing participants’ job involvement in pre-test and post-test. For the experimental group, group counseling sessions of MBCT were held in 16 sessions (each session took one hour and a half) with two sessions per week, while the control group received no intervention. The data were analyzed in SPSS V. 20, using One-Way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). The results of ANCOVA showed that group counseling based on MBCT significantly increased the job involvement of the participants in the experimental group compared to the control group in their post-test (F=24.43, P<0.01). The results of this study confirmed the effectiveness of group counseling based on MBCT in increasing the employee’s job involvement. It is recommended that this therapeutic approach be used in organizational and work environments for enhancing job involvement among employees and increasing organizational effectiveness.