Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Abstract
Background & Objectives: Depression is the most common and socially costly of the psychiatric disorders. A depressed person must have at least four other symptoms, including changes in sleep, appetite, or weight; psychomotor slowness or restlessness; decreased energy; feelings of guilt or worthlessness; problems in thinking, concentrating, and making decisions; recurrent thoughts of death or suicide; and plans or attempts to commit suicide. The most common treatment for mild to moderate monopolar depression is cognitive–behavioral therapy. This treatment emphasizes the continuity of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In this approach, it is believed that people can deal with stress more effectively by reconstructing their thoughts. Also, psychological capital intervention is a model that emphasizes the construction and creation of components, each of which can serve as a powerful tool to strengthen individuals against life's challenges. In most intervention models, the role of positive psychological components such as hope, optimism, self–efficacy, and resilience is less considered. This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of psychological capital intervention and cognitive–behavioral intervention in patients with mild to moderate depression.
Methods: The present study was a quasi–experimental one that employed a pretest–posttest and two–month follow–up design with a control group. The study population consisted of all people with mild to moderate depression who were referred to Aftab Counseling Center in Najafabad City, Iran, in the first half of 2018. The inclusion criteria included a score of 14 to 28 on the Beck Depression Inventory–II, being aged greater than 18 years, the ability to read and write, and willingness to participate in the study. Severe depression, receiving individual counseling services outside of group sessions, and missing more than two sessions were the exclusion criteria. Among depressed patients applying for training sessions based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, 45 clients who had a score of 14 to 28 in the Beck Depression Inventory–II were randomly assigned to two experimental groups and one control group. The study tool in the pretest, posttest, and follow–up was the Beck Depression Inventory–II (Beck et al., 1996). For patients in one experimental group, psychological capital intervention was conducted in 8 sessions of 90 minutes in a group manner. For the other experimental group, the cognitive–behavioral intervention session was conducted in 8 sessions, each lasting 90 minutes, in a group setting. The control group did not receive any intervention. In this study, the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki were observed, including explaining the research objectives and obtaining informed consent from the study subjects, voluntary participation in the study, the right to withdraw from the study, the harmlessness of the intervention, answering questions, and providing results if desired. In the present study, descriptive statistics indicators, including mean and standard deviation, were used to describe the study subjects in different research groups. Also, inferential statistics, including the Chi–square test, were used to compare the distribution of demographic characteristics of the research groups in the pretest. Also, the statistical method of analysis of variance with repeated measures was used to test the research hypotheses, and the Bonferroni posttest was used. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS version 24 software. The significance level of all tests was considered to be 0.05.
Results: The results showed that in the posttest and follow–up, the mean scores of psychological capital intervention and cognitive–behavioral intervention groups in the depression variable decreased significantly compared to the control group (p<0.001). Also, comparing the two experimental groups with each other showed that the psychological capital intervention was more effective in the follow–up stage compared to the cognitive–behavioral intervention (p=0.045).
Conclusion: Based on the findings of the present study, both types of intervention, based on psychological capital and cognitive–behavioral intervention, have a significant effect on reducing depressive symptoms in patients with mild to moderate depression. However, intervention based on psychological capital has a more lasting impact on reducing depression over time, and psychological capital can act as a protective factor against depression.