Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Training in Reducing Depression in Visually Impaired Male Students

Objectives: According to the prevalence of psychological problems, especially depression in people with visual impairment, this study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of group training of cognitive behavioral therapy in reducing depression in visually impaired male students.&nbsp; Methods: This study employed a quasi-experimental design, with pre-test and post-test and control group. The study population included 30 students with visual impairment from high school and pre-university levels. The subjects studied at the Martyr Mohebi School in Tehran which is for visually impaired students. The subjects were selected by convenience sampling method and were assigned randomly to experimental and control groups (15 subjects in each group). The second version of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)-II was used as pre-test and post-test for both groups. The experimental group received 10 sessions (twice a week) of cognitive behavioral therapy while the control group followed their daily routine. Results: Data analysis was done using statistical software SPSS (version 21). ANCOVA test was performed to examine differences between the two groups. The findings of this study indicate that cognitive-behavioral therapy training was significantly effective in reducing depressive symptoms of male students with visual impairment in the experimental group (P<0.01). Discussion: The findings demonstrated that cognitive behavioral therapy was significantly effective in improving depression of male students with visual impairment in experimental group. The group training needs to be adopted by medical practitioners on a cohort for validating its effectiveness on a larger scale.