The Effectiveness of Emotion-focused Group Therapy on Hope and Negative Automatic Thoughts among Divorced Women

Background and Objectives: Divorce is one of the social harms that reduces general health and quality of life among women. Emotion-focused group therapy aims to limit the adverse psychological effects of divorce. The objective of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of emotion-focused group therapy on hope and negative automatic thoughts among divorced women. Material and Methods: This study was a quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest and control group. Participants included women who had been divorced and had sought help from community centers in Tehran city in 2017. Simple random sampling was used and participants were categorized as two equal intervention and control groups. The intervention group received emotion-focused group therapy for 12 sessions and then post-test was performed for them. For data collection, the Hope Scale developed by Snyder et al and Negative Automatic Thoughts developed by Holon & Kendall were used. Statistical analyses were performed using IBM SPSS-22. Results: Responses of 60 (intervention group=30 and control group=30) was analyzed. The mean (SD) of hope in divorced women was higher than control group after emotion-focused group therapy: 32.6 (5.1) vs. 28.8 (5.4), P<0.01. In addition, emotion-focused group therapy reduced higher negative automatic thoughts among the intervention group compared to the control group: 100.3 (6.4) vs. 104.1 (5.9), P