Comparison the Effectiveness of Solution-Focused Therapy with Reality Therapy on Vitality, Subjective Vitality and Cognitive Fusion in High School Girls Students

Abstract

Introduction and Aim: Students are the future builders of society, and efforts to improve their psychological characteristics are of great importance. Therefore, the aim of this study was comparison the effectiveness of solution-focused therapy with reality therapy on vitality, subjective vitality and cognitive fusion in high school girls students.

Methodology: The present study was a quasi-experimental design with a pretest, posttest and two-month follow-up with a control group. The statistical population consisted of all high school girls students in Neyshabur in the 2021-2 academic years, which forty-five students were selected through purposive sampling method and randomly assigned to three equal groups (15 participants per group). The first experimental group received seven sessions of solution-focused therapy, and the second experimental group received eight sessions of reality therapy, while the control group was placed on a waiting list for therapy. The instruments of present research were included the Academic Vitality Questionnaire (Dehghanizadeh & Hosseinchari, 2013), Subjective Vitality Questionnaire (Ryan & Frederick, 1997) and Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire (Gillanders et al., 2014). The data were analyzed using analysis of variance with repeated measures and post hoc test in SPSS version 21.

Findings: The results of this study showed that both solution-focused therapy and reality therapy in compared to the control group led to increased academic vitality and subjective vitality and decreased cognitive fusion among high school girls students, and these effects were maintained at the follow-up stage (P<0.001). In addition, reality therapy was more effective than solution-focused therapy in decreasing cognitive fusion (P<0.05), while there was no significant difference between the effectiveness of two methods in improving academic vitality and subjective vitality (P>0.05).

Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, counselors and psychologists can use both solution‑focused therapy and reality therapy to increase academic vitality and subjective vitality, and however it is recommended to use reality therapy to decrease cognitive fusion.