EFFECTIVENESS OF COMBINATION OF TRANSCRANIAL DIRECT CURRENT STIMULATION AND MINDFULNESS-BASED GROUP COGNITIVE THERAPY ON DEPRESSION REDUCTION IN NONCLINICAL POPULATIONS

Depression is the most common mental disorder in the world. Treatment with
transcranial direct current stimulation is one of the new treatments, and mindfulness-based group
cognitive therapy is one of the effective treatments for depression. The purpose of this study was to
evaluate the efficacy of the combination of these two therapies in reducing depression.
Materials & Methods: This was a quasi-experimental design with pre-test, post-test with control group.
Subjects were 75 students with depressive symptoms who were selected by purposeful method based on
the Beck Depression Inventory (score above 15) and then they were randomly divided into 5 groups
(Including 3 experimental groups, sham group and control group) and re-evaluated in post-test using the
Beck Depression Inventory. The data were analyzed by analysis of covariance using SPSS 21 software.
Results: The results showed that all experimental groups had a significant decrease in post-test
depression scores (p <0.05) while in the sham and control groups there was no significant difference in
post-test (p> 0.05). There was also a significant decrease in depression scores in the combination of
transcranial direct current stimulation and mindfulness-based group cognitive therapy compared to the
other groups.
Conclusion: Combining transcranial direct current stimulation and mindfulness-based group cognitive
therapy is effective in reducing depression in the nonclinical population