Comparison of the Brief Behavioral Activation Treatment and Meta-cognitive Therapy in the Reduction of the Symptoms and in the Improvement of the Quality of Life in the Major Depressed Patients

This research aims to investigate the effectiveness and to compare the brief behavioral activation treatment and meta-cognitive therapy in the reduction of the symptoms and in the improvement of the quality of life in the major depressed patients. Using a pre-test post-test experimental design along with control group and also conventional sampling method, 34 female subjects, being evaluated according to DSM-IV-TR by the psychiatrist, were randomly divided into two experimental groups and a control group namely group under short-term behavioral activation treatment, group under meta cognitive therapy and control group. The experimental groups were studied for two months .BDI-II, HRSD, WHOQOL-BREF were given to the subjects before and after treatment and at the 3 month follow up period. The results were analyzed using multi-variable covariance analysis, Tokay post hoc test, and T-test. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the effectiveness of the two methods of treatment. The findings not only confirmed the effectiveness of the two methods of treatment in the reduction of symptoms and improvement of the quality of life in depressed patients, but they also showed the considerable preference of the short-term behavioral activation treatment over the meta cognitive therapy at the end of the treatment and also follow-up period. Both methods of treatment were effective in the reduction of depression symptoms, and given the preference of short-term behavioral activation treatment over the meta cognitive therapy, this method (short-term behavioral activation) can be used as a selected method for depression treatment.