Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation and Distress Tolerance Skills Training on Coping Strategies, Emotion Regulation, and Perceived Stress in Prisoners

Background: emotional dysregulation and coping strategies of individuals in coping with distress and their significance in promoting general health have always been of interest to researchers. the present study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills training on coping strategies, emotion regulation, and perceived stress in prisoners. methods: a quasi-experimental study was conducted. the statistical population consisted of 200 prisoners in fuman prison, iran. a total of 30 individuals who met the inclusion criteria were selected using convenient sampling method and then randomly assigned into two experimental and control groups (15 each). participants in the two groups were matched for education level and age. experimental group received 12 sessions of teaching emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills one hour per week. both groups filled out cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire (cerq-p), blinger and mouse’s coping responses inventory (cri), cohen’s perceived stress scale (pss-14) at baseline and after treatment. the data was analyzed using one-way anova and multivariate analysis of covariance in ibm spss statistics for windows, version 21.0. results: about 60% of the participants were in age range of 31-45 and more than 60% had imprisonment experience. moreover, 80% of them were illiterate and 66% were unemployed. since eta value was 0.97 for variables including coping strategies, emotion regulation, and perceived stress, it seems that teaching emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills have been highly effective in improving coping strategies and reducing perceived stress in prisoners (p<0.001). conclusion: emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills improved emotion regulation and coping strategies, and reduced using emotion-focused coping strategies and perceived stress in prisoners.