Received: March 2017, Accepted: May 2017 Background: Emotion plays an important role in adapting to life changes and stressful events. Difficulty regulating emotions is one of the problems drug abusers often face. The present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of emotion regulation training on increasing self-efficacy and well-being in drug-dependent individuals. Materials and Methods:The present study had a quasi-experimental design wherein pretest-posttest evaluations were applied using a control group and follow-up. The population was all substance abusers who referred to the Mehrvarzan addiction treatment clinic of Rafsanjan, Iran, in 2015. The statistical sample was composed of 30 available members. Results:The results showed that the emotion regulation training has significant effectiveness in increasing self-efficacy and well-being in substance abusers. The effectiveness of the training on increasing well-being was persistent in the follow-up period, but increasing self-efficacy was not persistent. Thirty substance-dependent individuals were selected and then randomly assigned to the experiment and control groups. The experiment group received its training in eight 1.5-hour sessions. Analysis of variance with repeated measures was used to analyze the data. There was significant increase in self-efficacy (P < 0.01) and well-being (P < 0.01) after emotion regulation training. Conclusions: Self-efficacy and well-being in drug-dependent individuals of this study were increased by emotion regulation training. We may conclude that the emotion regulation training can be applied alongside other therapies to treat drug abusers in addiction treatment clinic.

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the most effective coping mechanism to deal with auditory hallucinations that reduces the frequency of voice-hearing and associated distress. In the present randomized controlled trial, each of the three coping mechanisms of attentional avoidance, attentional focusing, and mindfulness were used in one group and the fourth group was the control group. Method: A total of 64 patients with schizophrenia, categorized in three groups of attentional avoidance, attentional focusing and mindfulness and one control group, were asked to listen to an ambiguous auditory task depending on the type of their coping mechanism. After determining the baseline of distress, the task was performed in duplicate for each group. After playing the auditory task for the first time, participants were asked to rate out the level of their distress and compliance with instructions, and they were asked to estimate the likely number of words they had heard. After the second time, they were asked to note the words they hear during the task and rate out their distress and compliance with instructions again at the end of the task. Results: There was a significant difference between groups in terms of distress with a medium effect size of 0.47. The post hoc analysis revealed that mindfulness group reported less distress compared to the attentional focusing group (P = 0.017) and the control group (P = 0.027). Also, a significant difference existed between groups in terms of the frequency of the identified words, with a moderately strong effect size of 0.59, and a very good statistical power of 0.99. The post hoc analysis showed that attentional avoidance (P = 0.013) and attentional focusing (P = 0.011) groups heard fewer words than the control group. Conclusion: Attention is a good target for treating psychotic patients with auditory hallucinations. Also, manipulation of attention can affect the frequency of auditory hallucinations and associated distress.