Effects of a positive emotional intervention on depression and positive emotion among depressive disorder children

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of a positive emotional intervention with depressive disorder children who have been hurt in interpersonal offense in Taiwan. This study investigated whether this intervention could be effective in participants’ depression and positive emotion. A quasi-experimental design was used in this study. Twenty depressive disorder children were selected from one Taiwanese elemetary school. Their ages were around between 10 to 12. The participants were randomly divided into an experimental group and an alternative group of equal sizes. The members of experimental group were involved in an intervention based on the Enright Forgiveness positive emotional programs. The alternative group received the general school guidance programs. The intervention took ten weeks. The experimental intervention based on Enright process model of forgiveness has been shown to be effective in improving psychological health. Each group of participants received intervention with the researcher who had over 20 years of experiences on both the forgiveness intervention and school guidance program. Participants were administrated these two measures at pretest, posttest, and follow-up test: the Children Depression Scale and the Enright Forgiveness Inventory. The data were analyzed with one-way ANCOVA. The experimental group, compared to the alternative treatment group had significantly decreased in depression and significantly gains in forgiveness from pretest to posttest. Furthermore, the trends were the same from pretest to follow-up.The more a person forgave, the less the depression. This study contributed to research on effects of depressive disorders’ intervention, and provided empirical information for school counsellors.