مصطفی دهقانی

Abstract Background: This study seeks to investigate the efficacy of behavioral-cognitive psychotherapy on decreasing the severity of depression in elderly women. Materials and methods: The present research is semi-empirical, with pre-test, post-test and control group. The population is consisted of all the geriatric women who referred to Family Consultation Center (FCC) of Boushehr Province due to suffering from severe depression. In order to set up a group for experimentation, the number of 70 people having a record at FCC was selected; then by using GDS-15 inventory, 46 people were chosen randomly and finally they were assigned to subject and control group (split into two groups equally). A 10-session behavioral-cognitive psychotherapy was administrated for subject group, while the control group did not receive any intervention. A week having completed the therapeutic sessions, the depression post- test, GDS-15, was administered for both groups and the results were evaluated using covariance analysis. Results: The analysis of findings based on t-test for each group showed that there is a significant difference between scores of both groups in depression post- test. Conclusion: The behavioral-cognitive psychotherapy is an efficient method for alleviating the severity of depression in elderly women. It gives much better outcomes than conventional methods and it is recommended to be practiced at geriatric centers.