Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Abstract
Background & Objective: In recent years, the prevalence of mental and psychological problems among young people and adolescents has increased significantly. One of the most common problems of teenagers during corona disease is stress and anxiety. One of the most important psychological effects is anxiety disorders and cognitive avoidance. Cognitive avoidance refers to getting rid of a person, action, or object, which temporarily reduces anxiety in a person. However, in the long term, it increases the anxiety. Cognitive avoidance is a coping strategy that expresses a person's cognitive, behavioral, and emotional efforts to manage a specific internal and external situation, prevents people from effectively responding to emotional stimuli, and weakens them in managing their emotions. Therefore, it is not recognized as a strategic and efficient factor. The purpose of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation on coronavirus anxiety and cognitive avoidance in teenagers with coronavirus anxiety.
Methods: The current research method was quasi–experimental with a pretest–posttest design with a control group. The study population comprised all teenagers with coronavirus anxiety living in Yazd City, Iran, in April and May 2021. Of them, 30 qualified volunteers were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. The inclusion criteria included their cooperation, written consent of the parents, and not undergoing other special treatments such as drug therapy. The research tools included the Corona Disease Anxiety Scale (CDAS) (Alipour et al., 2020) and the Cognitive Avoidance Questionnaire (ACQ) (Sexton & Dugas, 2008). The cognitive rehabilitation program was implemented in the form of computer games for eight 45–minute sessions three times a week for the experimental group. Data analysis was done using the analysis of covariance in SPSS version 22 software at a significance level of 0.05.
Results: The results showed a significant difference between the subjects of the experimental group and the control group in terms of the variable of corona anxiety in the posttest (p=0.028). Also, the results regarding the variable of cognitive avoidance showed a significant difference in the posttest between the experimental group and the control group (p=0.023).
Conclusion: According to the results of this research about the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation in reducing corona anxiety and cognitive avoidance, this treatment method is recommended to experts in this field.