Investigating the effectiveness of Beck's cognitive therapy to treast the several levels of depression

03. Summary The main aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of Beck's cognitive therapy performed both individually and group on mild, moderate and severe depressions experienced by university students. In this study, at first stage descriptive and secondly experimental research methods were used. At the first stage used descriptive research method, Beck Depression Inventory was administered to 606 students selected by means of stratified random sampling method among 3094 students going on their education at Fatih Education Faculty of Karadeniz Technical University. Considering the scores of inventory, the proportions of each level of depressions were found, and using several statistic techniques, the incidence of depression in relation to some variables such as sex, grade level, the place coming from and socio-economic status were investigated. At the second used experimental research method, for each level of depressions a female and a male student were selected randomly from volunteers for individual therapies, and for each level of depressions experiment and a control group including four female and four male students were selected randomly from volunteers for group therapies. Before the therapies Zung Depression Scale was administered to all the students. And then Beck's cognitive therapy was performed both individually and group in a total of 10 sessions, two times weekly. Control groups were not given any counseling. After completing therapies, Beck Depression Inventory and Zung Depression Scale were administered to all the students again. Results showed that, there were no depression at 34% of all the students, were mildly depression at 31% of, moderately depression at 24% of, and severely depression 11% of all the students. There were no significant statistical differences in regard to the variables of sex and grade level (p > 0.05). Depression was observed more in the students have low socio economic status and come from province. It is found that, mildly and moderately depression were treated completely, and severely depression was reduced to mild level by Beck's cognitive therapy performed both individually and group (p < 0.005 for Zung's scores, and p < 0.001 for Beck's scores). VIE