How does client expressed emotional arousal relate to outcome in experiential therapy for depression?

摘要

Experiential empirically supported treatments for depression assume that both arousal and experiencing of emotion are necessary for good treatment outcomes. The current study examined the importance of emotional arousal and experiencing to outcome during 32 experiential therapies for major depression. Experiential theory assumes that arousal is important to outcome because it facilitates further emotional processing. The relative contribution of emotional arousal and experiencing was examined within phases of therapy. Two main hypotheses were explored. (1) We hypothesized that arousal would indirectly predict outcome mediated by experiencing and (2) we hypothesized that experiential therapy would increase emotional arousal across therapy. Both hypotheses were supported. The present findings therefore support experiential theory concerning the importance of both emotional arousal and experiencing to good outcome in experiential treatment of depression.