Abstract
Background & Objectives: Depression is the most common mental disorder in adolescence, and epidemiological studies have reported a high prevalence rate for adolescent depression worldwide, especially in girls. During adolescence, psychosocial maturation and rapid brain growth make adolescents more sensitive to stressful environments and life changes. Depression causes a lot of psychological and emotional harm to the individual; one of its most important harms is suicide. Suicide is a multi–stage process that includes suicidal thoughts, planning for suicide, attempting suicide, and taking action to end one's life. Therefore, suicidal thoughts are the first step to ending one's life and one of the predictors of suicide. Suicidal thoughts are a type of mental preoccupation with death that has not yet taken on a practical aspect. Various types of psychological interventions have been developed to reduce negative psychological symptoms and improve depression, one of which is the Rapid Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). This study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of EMDR on suicidal thoughts in depressed adolescent girls.
Methods: This quasi–experimental research employed a pretest–posttest design and a control group. Among depressed adolescent girls referred to the psychology clinics of Yazd City, Iran, 30 qualified volunteers were included in the study with the available sampling method; 15 of them were randomly assigned to the intervention group and 15 to the control group. The inclusion criteria were having a depressive disorder with suicidal thoughts, with the approval of a psychiatrist, an age range of 14 to 20 years, completing an informed consent form to participate in the study, and not using psychotherapy and medication methods simultaneously. The exclusion criteria were absence from a treatment session, failure to complete the questionnaire, and unwillingness to continue cooperation during the study. In the first session, ethical considerations were taken into account, including stating the objectives of the study, observing the principle of confidentiality, protecting the privacy of individuals, recording information in writing with the subjects' permission, and ensuring voluntary participation and informed consent. Suicidal thoughts variable scores were compared using the Scale for Suicidal Ideation (Beck et al., 1979) before and after the EMDR. The experimental group received EMDR training under the supervision of a psychologist in 6 60–minute sessions, one per week for 45 days; however, the control group was not provided with training during this period. In addition, the researchers pledged to provide free treatment sessions to the control group if the study results were significant. In the descriptive statistics section, the mean and standard deviation of the scores for each variable were extracted. In the inferential statistics section, data analysis was performed in SPSS version 22 software using analysis of covariance. The significance level of the tests was 0.05.
Results: Data analysis showed that the score of the suicidal thoughts in depressed adolescent girls in the intervention group and after receiving EMDR decreased significantly compared to the control group (p<0.001). Based on the results of the effect size, 0.71 % of the difference between the intervention group and the control group in the changes in the suicidal thoughts variable was due to EMDR.
Conclusion: According to the findings, 6 sessions of 60 minutes of EMDR have a significant effect on the suicidal thoughts in depressed adolescent girls and reduce suicidal thoughts in these persons. It is suggested that this method be used as an effective therapeutic intervention alongside other existing therapeutic approaches to reduce suicidal thoughts in depressed adolescent girls.