The impact of movie therapy on vulnerable women’s self-esteem referring to non-governmental social service clinics of Tehran

Background: Movie therapy is one of the approaches to increase the mental health and to decrease anxiety and depression. This study was performed to determine the impact of movie therapy on women’s self-esteem.

Methods: In this quasiexperimental study, sample included the women aged 20 to 50 who had visited the non-governmental social service clinics of Tehran in 2013. The participants of this study were 30 women that were assigned into two groups of intervention and control. The instrument for data collection was 10-itemRosenberg self-esteem scale which was completed before and after watching eight movies with psychological content of challenge and promotion of self-esteem aspects by intervention and control groups. The obtained data were fed into SPSS-18 software and analyzed via descriptive statistics, ANCOVA and independent t-test.

Results: The mean score of self-esteem in intervention group increased from 7.07±1.88 before to 15.8±1.29 after intervention; whereas, this declined from 6.54±1.12 to 5.76±1.52 in control group, indicating a significant difference in intervention group (P=0.0001).

Conclusion: the findings of this study showed that watching the selected movies with content of challenge and promotion of self-esteem aspects can be effective in increasing vulnerable women’s self-esteem as an easy and independent psycho-educational approach.