Mental Rehabilitation Based on Emotion Regulation Training to Reduce Depression in Students With Physical Disability

Objectives: Physical disability affects individual’s life and increases anxiety and depression. For this purpose, the present study aimed at investigating the efficacy of group emotion regulation training in reducing depression in students with physical disabilities.  Methods: The current international quasi-experimental study had a pre-test and post-test design with experimental and control groups. The study population comprised high school male students (n=26) with physical disabilities studying at Soroush High School, Tehran, Iran a special school for students with physical disabilities. The sample size was 26. Accordingly, 26 male students were selected from institutions serving children with physical disabilities using purposive sampling method based on the inclusion criteria, which having normal IQ (90 to 110) based on school records, physical disability for the secondary school students, no history of psychiatric or other disorders, and no history of hospitalization in psychiatric hospitals (based on medical records available at the school), and no history of attending therapeutic programs except for emotion regulation training. The selected individuals were randomly divided into two intervention and control groups each had 13 subjects. The intervention group attended eight sessions of emotion regulation training twice a week. Each session lasted 60 minutes. The scores of Beck depression inventory before and after the intervention were compared in both the groups.  Results: Mean age of the participants was 15.8±3.47 years. ANCOVA test was used to examine differences between the two groups. ANCOVA results showed that emotion regulation training could significantly reduce depression in students with physical disabilities (P<0.05).  Discussion: Data analysis showed that emotion regulation training could effectively reduce depression in students with physical disabilities. Therefore, the intervention used in the current study is a suitable counseling and therapeutic approach for students with physical disabilities.