The Effectiveness of Emotion-Focused Therapy on Increasing Self-Esteem and Reducing Feelings of Inferiority in Patients with Major Depressive Disorder

Abstract

Introduction and Aim: Major depressive disorder is one of the most prevalent psychological disorders and is commonly associated with low self-esteem and heightened feelings of inferiority, leading to substantial impairment in personal and social functioning. The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of emotion-focused therapy in increasing self-esteem and reducing feelings of inferiority among patients with major depressive disorder.

Methodology: This study employed a quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design with a control group. The statistical population consisted of patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder living in Tehran Province in 2026. Thirty participants were selected using purposive sampling and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups (15 participants in each group). The experimental group received eight 90-minute sessions of emotion-focused therapy, whereas the control group remained on a waiting list. Data collection instruments included the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (1967) and the Inferiority Feeling Questionnaire developed by Yao et al. (1997). Data were analyzed using independent samples t-test and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) in SPSS software.

Findings: The results of ANCOVA demonstrated that emotion-focused therapy had a significant positive effect on increasing self-esteem in patients with major depressive disorder (P<0.001). Furthermore, a significant difference was observed between the posttest mean scores of feelings of inferiority in the experimental and control groups, indicating that emotion-focused therapy significantly reduced feelings of inferiority (P<0.001). The effect sizes were 0.731 for self-esteem and 0.702 for feelings of inferiority, reflecting the strong effectiveness of the intervention.

Conclusion: Emotion-focused therapy, through emphasizing the processing and restructuring of maladaptive emotions, effectively enhanced self-esteem and reduced feelings of inferiority in patients with major depressive disorder. Therefore, this therapeutic approach can be considered a beneficial complementary intervention alongside first-line treatments for improving emotional and cognitive outcomes in depressed patients.