The effects of cognitive flexibility and emotionregulation skills on symptom severity in patientsdiagnosed with depression

This study was conducted to determine the effect of cognitive flexibility and cognitive emotion regulation on symptom severity in patients diagnosed with major depressive disorders and to reveal the relationship between them. Patients diagnosed with major depression who applied to the psychiatry outpatient clinic of a state hospital constituted the population of the study and 188 patients who met the research criteria constituted the sample of the study. Data were collected using the Personal Information Form, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Cognitive Emotion Regulation Scale (CEDS) and Cognitive Flexibility Inventory (CFI). Patients were found to have high depressive symptom severity and moderate cognitive flexibility. It was determined that there was a negative relationship between depressive symptom severity and cognitive flexibility level, cognitive flexibility was a variable predicting depressive symptom severity and explained 17% of it. It was observed that the patients tended to use the "focusing on thought (rumination)" strategy the most among the cognitive emotion regulation strategies. It was determined that cognitive emotion regulation strategies were a variable predicting depressive symptom severity and explained 25.5% of the change in depressive symptom level. It was found that there was a positive relationship between cognitive emotion regulation strategies of destruction, self-blame, blaming others and acceptance and depressive symptom severity. Among the cognitive emotion regulation strategies, "positive refocusing", "placing in perspective", "positive reviewing", "refocusing on planning" were found to be negatively correlated with depressive symptom severity. When the level of "positive refocusing", "placing in perspective", "positive reviewing", "positive reviewing", "refocusing on making plans", which are among cognitive flexibility and cognitive emotion regulation strategies in symptom management, increases in patients, depressive symptom severity also decreases. It is recommended to plan and implement nursing interventions to decrease symptom severity and increase cognitive flexibility and cognitive emotion regulation levels of patients.