Practice in Clinical Psychology
Year:2020 | Volume:8 | Issue:3|Papers Count:8

Objective: Many deaf adolescents tend to show more aggression, due to their less social and emotional skills. This also affects their self-evaluation and self-esteem. Life skills are related to the personal, intellectual, emotional, and physical development of an individual. The present study was done to examine the effectiveness of a life skills training program on improvement of the self-esteem and aggression control of deaf adolescents girls. Methods: This quasi-experimental study with a pre-test and post-test design using a control group Was done on 34 female deaf adolescents who were studying in first, second, and third grade of high school in Nezam Mafi High School, Tehran, Iran. Participants were selected using a purposive convenience sampling method and were randomly divided into two groups (experimental and control groups). The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI) and the BussPerry Aggression Questionnaire (AQ) were used to collect data. The life skills training program was delivered to the experimental group in eight 60-min sessions. Results: The results showed that the eight sessions of life skills training program significantly increased self-esteem (P<0. 001) and decreased aggression of the experimental group of deaf adolescents girls (P<0. 001) while there was no change in the control group. Conclusion: According to the results, it can be concluded that life skills training should be considered as a method for improving the mental status of deaf adolescent girls. Since there may be less social experiences in deaf adolescents, a training program may help them to achieve more self-esteem skills and be more successful in social communications.

Objective: This study was done to investigate the relationship between existential anxiety and demoralization syndrome in predicting psychological well-being in patients with cancer. Methods: This correlational study was done on 57 patients with cancer (skin, breast, and stomach) aged 20-40 years, referring to hospitals in Ardabil selected by purposive sampling. The selected individuals completed the existential anxiety, demoralization syndrome, and psychological wellbeing questionnaires. To analyze the data, the stepwise regression analysis was used. Results: The results showed a significant negative correlation between the existential anxiety and predicting psychological well-being in patients with cancer (P<0. 01) and also a significant negative correlation between demoralization syndrome and prediction of depression in patients with cancer (P<0. 01). Conclusion: According to the results of this study, people facing life-threatening illnesses, such as cancer experience existential concerns, such as death anxiety, uncertainty, absurdity, and loneliness and the aim of psychotherapy and counseling interventions in these people is to create a supportive atmosphere that helps these patients to accept the disease, and consequently improve their mental health.

Objective: Considering the role of attachment in the emotional development of children, the purpose of this study was to test the situational modulation of emotion recognition in children with secure/insecure attachment with regard to gender in Iranian students. Methods: this casual comparative study was done on a pool of 200 students aged 7-9 years from elementary schools of Tehran, Iran. The participants completed the Middle Childhood Attachment Scale (MCSA), of whom 60 children were assigned to two groups based on their scores on MCAS (secure vs. insecure). They read stories developed to manipulate the attachment schema, and after each story, they were tested for emotion recognition abilities (classification and intensity rating). Happy, sad, angry, and fearful faces were presented and reaction time was recorded using the AFFECT4. 0 software. Results: All children irrespective of attachment style, were faster in the identification of others’ emotional expressions in attachment situations than in a neutral situation. Boys made more errors in attachment situations than in the neutral situation, while for girls it did not differ. Among children with secure attachment, boys were faster than girls in recognition of emotion. Conclusion: In terms of attachment theory, attachment styles could have an important impact on the development process of the child’ s emotional skills.

Objective: The present study was done to determine the effect of self-differentiation training on attachment styles and self-esteem among married women in our center. Methods: This semi-empirical with pre-test and post-test was done on 30 subjects selected from married women in a training course during the spring 2017 using available sampling method who were divided into two experimental and control groups randomly. After training, the research questionnaires, including the Adult Attachment Scale by Hazan and Shaver and Rosenberg‘ s Self-esteem Scale were completed by the examinees. The members of the experimental group participated in a training course for 8 sessions (100 min) but no training was done for the control group. The research data were analyzed using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) via SPSS v. 22. Results: The results of ANCOVA indicated that self-differentiation training had a significant effect on secure attachment style, anxious-ambivalent attachment style, and self-esteem (P<0. 05), whereas it had no significant impact on avoidance attachment style (P>0. 05). Conclusion: The self-differentiation training intervention may lead to a rise in the secure attachment style and self-esteem and a reduction in anxious-ambivalent attachment style in married women in our center.

Objective: Emotion Coaching Parenting Program (ECPP) is one of the treatment programs focused on emotions and targets the way parents and children interact emotionally. Although the effectiveness of ECPP on children with internalizing disorders has been proved previously, the effects of this program have not been investigated in Iranian preschoolers with a range of internalizing disorders. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to examine the effects of ECPP when used by mothers of preschoolers with internalizing disorders. Methods: The current randomized controlled trial was done on 31 participants who were randomly assigned to the ECPP (n=15) and control (n=16) groups that completed all treatment sessions. Data were collected at three stages of pre-intervention, post-intervention, and 3-months follow-up, using Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, Emotion Regulation Checklist, Achenbach’ s Child Behavior Checklist, and Maternal Emotional Styles Questionnaire. Results: Repeated measures ANOVA tests were conducted to test differences between the intervention and control groups for maternal emotion regulation and maternal emotion coaching. The results indicated significant improvements in emotional awareness and emotion regulation of mothers in the intervention group at post-intervention and follow-up compared with the pre-intervention, while no significant improvements were found in the control group. Children in both groups showed improvements in emotional lability/negativity at post-intervention, but the improvements were significantly higher in the intervention group. Children of the intervention group also showed higher improvements in emotion regulation compared with the control group. Additionally, significant reductions in the symptoms of children’ s internalizing disorders at post-intervention and follow-up were observed in the intervention group compared with the control group. Conclusion: ECPP can be one of the effective treatments for reducing the symptoms of children’ s internalizing disorders and improving the emotion regulation of parent and child.

Background: The Health and well-being of older Canadian adults have been extensively studied; however, less is known about the health and well-being of older Canadian adults with a disability. Objective: This study was done to determine if participation in leisure and social activities has a significant independent effect on the overall health and life satisfaction of older Canadian adults with a disability. Methods: A secondary analysis of cross-sectional data from the 2006 Participation and Activity Limitation Surveys (PALS) was performed. Respondents were those who reported disability and were at least 65 years of age at the time of the PALS 2006 (n=7, 500, representing 1, 755, 870 Canadians). “ Participation in social and leisure activities” was measured based on four types of activities outside the home in 12 months prior to the survey. The single-item measure of self-rated health was used to measure overall health. Life satisfaction was measures based on five items. Weighted data were used to describe the target population. Two sets of multivariate logistic regressions were conducted based on data for the total sample, and separately for men and women using bootstrapped weights. Results: A significant independent effect of participation in leisure and social activities on the general health and life satisfaction of older Canadians with a disability, for both men and women, was confirmed. Conclusion: Participation in leisure and social activities is a potential venue to enhance the health and well-being of older Canadian adults with a disability.

Objective: Cognitive flexibility and social cognition are the appropriate models for understanding psychological problems, through which people can meet various challenges. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between cognitive flexibility and social cognition with obsessive-compulsive symptoms among female students at Allameh Tabataba’ i University. Methods: This cross-sectional study was done on 200 students female students at Allameh Tabataba’ i University in Tehran studying in the academic year 2018-2019 selected by random multiple cluster sampling method. The used tools were cognitive flexibility inventory, student social cognition questionnaire, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms inventory. Results: There was a negative significant correlation between the total score of obsessivecompulsive symptoms with cognitive flexibility and social cognition. In addition, the results of multiple regression analysis showed that cognitive flexibility and social cognition can explain obsessive-compulsive symptoms in students. Conclusion: Studying cognitive flexibility and social cognition is an efficient method to understand the underlying factors associated with obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Evaluation of these factors can be useful in the prevention and treatment of these symptoms.

Objective: the aim of the present research was to analyze the predictability of suicide attempts, based on attentional bias in a clinical and non-clinical population. Methods: 120 participants (77 females and 43 males) were intentionally selected in three diagnostic groups: clinical suicides, clinical non-suicides, and non-clinical ones (40 individuals in each group). They participated in the Suicide Stroop Task as well as the Beck Scale of Suicide Ideation (BSS). The attentional bias parameters, including reaction time and interference time, were computed and the data were analyzed using Multivariate Analysis of Variance and Discriminant Analysis. Results: the results obtained from the multivariate analysis revealed that the variables of interference time did not have a significant indication for the three groups of individuals in suicide stroop (P<0. 568; F=0. 569), positive stroop (P<0. 201; F=1. 626), and negative stroop (P<0. 863; F=0. 147). However, in the case of reaction time, there was a significant difference in the values obtained for all the three groups in terms of suicide stroop (P<0. 000; F=12. 759), positive stroop (P<0. 000; F=18. 520), negative stroop (P<0. 000; F=10. 995), and neutral stroop (P<0. 000; F=8. 288). In addition, the results obtained from the discriminant analysis show that the variables of suicide ideation (0. 822), reaction time in positive stroop (0. 571), suicide stroop (0. 470), negative stroop (0. 438), and neutral stroop (0. 376) were correspondingly crucial in predicting the behavior of the clinical suicide attempt, clinical non-suicide attempt, and non-clinical groups. Conclusion: We found that for suicide stroop, the clinical and non-clinical cases did not show a significant difference in terms of the interference effect; however, they differed in terms of reaction time. Therefore, it seems that using emotional stroop, attentional bias towards suiciderelated topics is not dependent on the clinical situations, and other parameters, such as scoring methods should be considered. However, there is still a need to conduct more extensive studies.