Effect Evaluation of the Emotion Growth Group for Depressive Patients： Emotional intelligence enhancement and depressive symptoms improvement

• Main Authors: Chia-Ju Lin, 林家如
• Other Authors: 謝碧玲
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/56951188044535078074

碩士 === 高雄醫學大學 === 行為科學研究所碩士班 === 94 === Abstract Depressive disorders are common mental disorders, and there are many therapies designed for their treatment, but no therapy has yet focuses on emotional theories for intervention. Depressive patients have deficits in their emotional abilities, including cognitive bias toward negative information, and frequent use of rumination to deal with negative mood. It was hypothesized that promoting patients’ emotional intelligence, via using proper skills and strategies to effectively regulate mood experience, depressive patients’ symptoms are reduced. Therefore, this research targeted emotional experiences of the depressive patients as the intervention focus, and developed an Emotion Growth Group to promote emotional abilities. The purpose were to examine whether the group intervention could help improve emotional abilities and reduce depressive symptoms, and to explore the relations between the depressive symptoms improvement and emotional intelligence enhancement. The study adopted a 2x2 factoral mixed design (Factor 1. pretest vs. posttest; Factor 2. emotion growth group vs. control group). There were 34 participants in this study, including 10 in control group. The results were as following: Patients who participated in the intervention group did not show significant symptom improvements. In terms of patients’ emotional abilities, “emotional awareness and expression” abilities – the expressive confidence significantly decreased, the awareness of one’s emotions significantly increased, and the externally oriented thinking significantly decreased; “emotional regulation” abilities – the regulation strategies of distraction significantly increased, and rumination significantly decreased. Regarding the relations between depressive symptoms and emotional abilities: without group intervention, depressive symptoms (low depression, low anxiety, high esteem, high self-efficiency) were related to: 1) low emotional disguise, low typical mood, high clarity of emotion awareness, low negative emotional expressivity, and high emotional awareness of others (the above are emotional awareness and expression abilities); 2) high problem-solving, low emotional venting, high pleasant activities, low avoiding problematic situation, and high problem-solving planning (the above are emotional regulation abilities); 3) high emotional efficacy (the above is emotional utilization and reflection ability). With group intervention, depressive symptom improvements were related to: 1) low difficulty identifying feelings, high clarity of emotion awareness, and high positive emotional expressivity (the above are emotional awareness and expression abilities); 2) high reappraisal, low rumination, high problem- solving, and low avoiding problematic situation (the above are emotion regulation abilities); 3) and high cognitive reflection, and high emotion efficacy (the above are emotional utilization and reflection abilities). In conclusion, there were no significant symptom improvement, but the emotion growth group was helpful to promoting the emotional awareness and expression abilities and the emotion regulation abilities of depressive patients. Perhaps, longer intervention program is needed for patients to improve emotion abilities, and the symptoms may show improvement during follow-up. In addition, the results of regression analyses pointed out promising relations between depressive symptom improvement and emotion ability enhancement, and it is valuable information for further development of intervention and investigation of emotional processing of mood disorders.