Non-Violent Communication and Its Impact on Suicidal Ideations and Coping with Stress Styles

Abstract

One of the important dimensions of violence is suicide, or violence directed toward self that many people suffer from nowadays. In the meantime, adolescents and especially girls are more likely to be harmed. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of group training with non-violent communication (NVC) method on suicidal ideations and coping with stress styles of adolescent girls. The target community in this research was availably selected from the charity centers of Tehran suburbs. In this study, 15 adolescent girls were in the experimental group and 15 in the control group. The criteria for entering the research were students aged 11 to 19 years and the vulnerable socio-economic income. Eight training sessions of NVC were presented for the experimental group in the pre-test and post-test intervals, while no intervention was performed for the control group. Data collection instruments were Beck’s scale for suicidal ideation (BDI) and Endler & Parker’s coping inventory for stressful situations (CISS). After statistical analysis, the effectiveness of this training was investigated on dependent variables by multivariate analysis of covariance. Eventually, the results showed a significant difference between the experimental and control groups ( p < 0.05). The finding of the study showed that NVC training can reduce suicidal ideations in adolescent girls who are socially and economically vulnerable. According to the findings, non-violent communication training has a higher effect on emotion-focused coping style compared to other stress coping styles.