The Effectiveness of Cognitive Therapy from the Perspective of Religious Teaching in Reducing Depression, Anxiety, and Stress in Students

The current study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive therapy from the perspective of religious teaching in reducing the rate of depression, anxiety, and stress in students of Sistan and Baluchestan University. This research was a quasi- experimental with a pre-test and post-test design with experiment and control groups. The sample consisted of ۳۰ students suffering from depression, anxiety and stress symptoms which were randomly divided into two control (۱۵ patients) and experimental groups (۱۵ patients). The patients were selected from students who were referred to the counselling center of the University of Sistan and Baluchestan. The participants of the experimental group underwent religious cognitive therapy for ۸ sessions and the control group participated in another program and received unrelated topics for ۸ sessions. To collect the data DASS – ۲۱ was used. To analyze the data one way ANCOVA was used. The results showed that the level of depression, anxiety, and stress in the experimental group were significantly reduced in comparison to the control group (p<.۰۵). With considering the results of this research, it can be concluded that the religious cognitive therapy method can be effective and efficient in reducing the level of depression, anxiety, and stress.

Keywords:

Cognitive Therapy , Religious Teachings , Depression , Anxiety , Stress