The effectiveness of written emotional disclosure on depression and working memory capacity in girl adolescents with depressive symptoms

Present research was arranged in order to investigate The effectiveness of written emotional disclosure on depression and working memory capacity in girl adolescents with depressive symptoms. An experimental research method was applied using pretest-posttest design of control group. Total number of 40 students from Tehran, Iran were chosen through multi-stage cluster sampling, and they were randomly categorized in two experimental and control groups.Depression of the participants was measured by Beck depression test and clinical interview while active memory examinations were utilized to assess working memory capacity of them. Afterwards, the experimental group received 8 sessions (30 minutes each) of written emotional disclosure. One week after the last training session students in both groups were post-tested by the same technique. Pearson correlations and variance/covariance methods were used for data analysis. The obtained results indicated that depression was adversely related to working memory capacity, and that written emotional expression reduced the depressive symptoms and increased working memory capacity. It should be noted that follow-ups were rerun after 2 months with the students responding to the tests once again. One more time, the results demonstrated that written emotional expression has kept its effectiveness.