The effectiveness of emotional freedom technique on menstrual pain and emotional regulation in female students

Background and Purpose: Emotional freedom technique is a new method based on acupuncture and cognitive therapy that plays an essential role in eliminating energy imbalanece in the body and helping individual recovery.Dysmenorrhea or painful menstruation is one of the most common problems of women's diseases.The purpose of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of emotinal freedom technique in reducing menstrual pain and emotion regulation in female students in Yazd city.Method: The research method is quasi-experimental study with a pre-test-post-test design and one control group.The population of this research includes all girls aged 12 to 18 years in Yazd city in 2023.Using random cluser sampling 30 adolescent girls in one of the Yazd governmental schools were selected and randomly replaced to experimental (n=15) and control (n=15) group.The experimental group received Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) for 6 sessions every week for 45 minites while the contol group did not receive any intervention.In this research, Persian version of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ, Gross & John, 2003) and Persian version of the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ, Melzack 1987) were used for pre-test and post-test evaluation.In the end, the data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance test in SPSS24. Results:The results showed that emotional freedom technique has a significant effect on the reduction of menstrual pain (P>0/002) and emotional regulation (cognitive reappraisal, P<0/01, F=24/142 and suppression P<0/01 F= 21/272) in adolescent girls. Conclusion:In general, the results indicated the significant effect of the emotion freedom technique in changing unconscious beliefs, negative emotions, and reducing menstrual pain in female students.Therefore, it is suggested that this method be taught to female students in medical centers and schools to reduce menstrual pains and improve emotion regulation.