Comparison of the Effectiveness of Interpersonal Counseling and Interpersonal Psychotherapy in Emotional Expression, Social Skills, and Depression Symptoms in Students

Background: Depression symptoms are among the most common psychological problems in students. Short-term treatments are important in preventing depression from turning into a disorder. Objectives: The current study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of interpersonal counseling (IPC) in depression symptoms, emotional expression, and social skills of students in comparison to interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT). Methods: A pretest and posttest design with follow-up was used in this study, with two experimental groups and a control group conducted in Mashhad, Iran, in 2021. A total of 51 subjects who scored 14 or higher on the Beck Depression Inventory-Second Edition (BDI-II) were randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. Finally, the information obtained from 41 subjects was analyzed. The experimental groups underwent 7 sessions of 45 minutes of IPC and 12 sessions of 90 minutes of IPT every week. At the beginning of the study, after the end of the intervention, and after one- and three-month follow-up periods, all the subjects were evaluated with the BDI-II, emotional expressiveness, and social skills questionnaires. The findings were analyzed using the repeated measurement method and Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests. All the analyses were carried out with SPSS software (version 23). Results: Both IPC and IPT treatments were effective in depression symptoms (M: 31.76, 20.41, 22.94, and 24), emotional expression (M: 32.94, 40.26, 38.47, and 37.23), and social skills (M: 224.9, 265.2, 254.4, and 253.7) (P < 0.05). The comparison of the two treatments showed no significant difference in the variables (P > 0.05). Conclusions: The findings of the present study can be considered a useful step in the field of short-term and effective interventions.