The Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy on Suicidal Thoughts of Female Students with Major Depression Disorder

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy on reducing suicidal ideation in students with major depressive disorder. The research method was quasi-experimental with pretest-posttest design and control group. The statistical population of this study consisted of all second grade female students of of high schools in Tehran city in the academic year of  2018-2019. After initial assessment using BDI-II scale, a total of 30 female students were selected using purposeful sampling and randomly assigned into an experimental group (n=15) and a control group (n=15). The experimental group received 8 mindfulness-based cognitive therapy protocols for 8 sessions of 90 minutes (2 sessions per week); the control group was on the waiting list. The Beck Suicide Questionnaire (1989) was used for data collection in two stages of pre-test and post-test. Univariate analysis of covariance was used to analyze the data. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the mean of post-test scores of the experimental and control groups in suicidal thoughts. According to the results of this study, it is suggested that psychologists and counselors use the results of this study to reduce the suicidal ideation in students.