Comparison and Effectiveness of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation and Emotion-Focused Therapy on Cognitive Emotion Regulation in Patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Abstract

The present study was designed and conducted to compare and evaluate the effectiveness of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and emotion-focused therapy (EFT) on cognitive emotion regulation in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in the city of Yazd. This research employed a quasi-experimental design with a pretest-posttest and a control group. The study included three groups (two experimental groups and one control group) with a total of 45 participants. The first group received transcranial direct current stimulation therapy, the second group underwent emotion-focused therapy, and the control group did not receive any interventions. The research instrument was the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) developed by Garnefski et al. (2007) to assess cognitive emotion regulation. Data analysis was conducted using covariance analysis via SPSS 26 software. The results of the analysis indicate that both transcranial direct current stimulation and emotion-focused therapy had a significant impact on cognitive emotion regulation in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (P < 0.05).