Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) Intervention on Self-esteem and Self-Criticism of females with binge eating behavior: a quasi-experimental study

Aim: the present paper aimed to investigate rational-emotive behavior therapy on self-esteem and self-criticism of females with binge-eating behavior. method: a quasi-experimental design was utilized in this study, which involved a control group, a pre-test, and a post-test of samples taken from two clinics in tehran (armaghane salamat and zehne aram, district 3), of which 24 females were selected through a purposive sampling method throughout october to december 2019. twenty-four participants in the experimental and control groups were randomly assigned to the experimental group (n=12), which was treated with rational-emotive behavior therapy for eight weekly 90-120 minute sessions, while the control group (n=12) did not receive any treatment. all participants were tested using the rosenberg self-esteem scale (ses)and the levels of self- criticism (losc) scale methods. in addition to descriptive statistics, multivariate analysis of covariance (mancova), and normality tests were employed to interpret the results and the spss- 25 program was used for all the analyses. result: considering the results, there was a significant difference between the pretest and post-test results for the scores of self-esteem (p<0.01, f=87.507) and self-criticism (p<0.01, f=151.221). taking these findings into consideration, it is possible to conclude that rational-emotive behavior therapy is effective at improving self-esteem and decreasing self-criticism.conclusion: the findings showed that rational-emotive behavior therapy could help females with binge-eating behavior. therefore, this intervention program is recommended for improving self-esteem and mitigating self-criticism among females with binge- eating behavior.