Effectiveness of Dialectical Behavior Therapy on Emotion Regulation, Food Cravings, and Body Mass Index Among Obese Female Students

Background: obesity is a medical condition in which excess fat tissues have been accumulated in a person's body. excessive accumulation of adipose tissue can cause a decline in health indicators, including reduced life expectancy or decreased quality of life.objective: this study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of dialectical behavior therapy on emotion regulation, food cravings, and body mass index (bmi) of obese female students.methods: this quasi-experimental study was conducted based on a pretest-posttest control group design and follow-up. the statistical population of this study included all female obese students studying in the first year of high school in sari, mazandaran province, iran, in the academic year of 2019-20 referring to endocrinology and obesity centers. the samples (n=24) were selected by the convenience sampling method and considering the inclusion and exclusion. they were then randomly assigned into two groups, namely experimental and control. the tools that were used to gather the necessary data included the food cravings questionnaire and difficulties in emotion regulation scale. the collected data were analyzed in spss software (version 22) using repeated-measures analysis of variance.results: the results showed that dialectical behavior therapy had an effect on the components of emotion regulation, bmi, and food craving. this result was significant up to the follow-up stage (p<0.01).conclusion: it can be concluded that dialectical behavior therapy reduced negative emotions in obese people, and according to one of the main factors of craving (i.e., negative emotions), effective emotion regulation could reduce craving. as a result, it led to weight loss in obese female students.