The Impact of Emotion-focused Therapy on Anxiety and Depression among Female-Headed Households in Imam Khomeini Relief Committee

Introduction: The existence of female-headed households is a global fact. These women are the most vulnerable members of the society, who experience some degrees of emotional distress, general signs, and symptoms of anxiety and depression. So, this study was conducted to evaluate the effect of emotion-focused therapy on anxiety and depression of the female-headed households. Methods: This quasi-experimental study had a pretest-posttest design in which the experimental and control groups were investigated. The study was performed on 30 women who headed the households and were supported by the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation of Yazd city. The participants were selected randomly in 2016. The data collection tool for this study included the Beck anxiety and depression questionnaire. Finally, the collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 20. Results: The findings showed that the emotion-focused treatment method reduced the anxiety of the participants. Moreover, the effect size was equal to 0.52, which indicated that 52 percent of the variance changes were attributed to the independent variable. In addition, emotion-focused therapy reduced the level of depression among women. The reported effect size was 0.734, which showed that 73 percent of the variance changes were due to the independent variable. Therefore, we can conclude that emotion-focused therapy had a significant effect on the anxiety and depression of female-headed households (p < 0.001). Conclusion: According to the results of this study, the multivariable model of covariance analysis indicates that changes in the groups can be caused by the intervention. Therefore, it can be concluded that emotion-focused therapy was effective on the anxiety and depression of the women. Consequently, this therapy can be used to reduce the anxiety and depression of the female household heads.