Effectiveness of strength-based approach on anxiety and depression of adolescents with anxiety disorders

BACKGROUND: Therapists use the client's strengths to expand their perspective and create hope and motivation, create positive meanings through reframing and metaphor, and identify strengths through the interpersonal therapeutic processes. This study aimed to examine the strength-based approach to anxiety and depression among adolescents with anxiety disorders. METHODS: In this research, a quasi-experimental design included a control group, a pre-test, and a post-test of 36 adolescent girls with anxiety disorders selected through a purposive sampling method from psychological centers in Tehran City, Iran, from October to December 2020. There were 18 participants in each of the experimental and control groups. Afterward, they were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HARS) and Beck Depression Inventory-Second Edition (BDI-II) were applied. The experimental group (n = 18) was treated with strengths-based training, for 8 weekly 90-minute sessions, while the control group (n = 18) did not receive any treatment. The test for inferential statistics was multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). These analyses were conducted via SPSS software. The significance level of the analysis was 0.05. RESULTS: There was a significant difference between the pretest and post-test results for anxiety (P < 0.001, F = 15.28) and depression (P < 0.001, F = 14.78). Moreover, the largest effect size was determined by the anxiety (0.597) variable, which indicates that 59% of the variance between the experimental and control groups was the result of a strength-based approach. CONCLUSION: The strength-based intervention can be an effective approach to improving the mental health of adolescents with anxiety disorders.