مهدی زمستانی

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common psychiatric syndrome characterized by significant affective dysfunctions, including the cardinal symptoms of persistent low mood and/or a marked decrease in the experience of pleasurable activities (Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, DSM–5, American Psychiatric Association (APA), 2013). Given its debilitating nature and high prevalence, researchers have sought to identify factors that may be etiologically significant in MDD to serve as targets for intervention (Morris, Bylsma, & Rottenberg, 2009). In the last two decades, various authors have explored the role of deficits in adaptive emotion regulation (ER) as a putative risk or maintaining factor of this frequently recurring (Judd, 1997; Kupfer, 1991; Solomon et al., 2000) or even chronic disorder (e.g.,Berking, Ebert, Cuijpers,&Hofmann, 2013; Hofmann, Sawyer, Fang,&Asnaani, 2012). According to Teasdale and Barnard (1993), the appraisal of a situation as highly aversive, uncontrollable and stable over time results in the activation of depressogenic information processing schema which cue further negative affective states. In the absence of adaptive ER skills, a vicious cycle of undesired affective states and depressogenic appraisals of these states may develop and contribute to the development and maintenance of MDD (Lara &Klein, 1999; Teasdale & Barnard, 1993, pp. 168e175 and 212e214). Teaching patients effective ER skills can be assumed to interfere with this vicious cycle and help patients overcome MDD (Morris, Bylsma, & Rottenberg, 2009). In the past decade, the dominance of the cognitive-behavioral paradigm was challenged by the so called third-wave in CBT (Hayes, 2004) which focuses on enhancing the patients' ability to accept and tolerate negative (affective) states (Hayes, 2004). Recently, the use of self-compassion has been proposed as potentially adaptive strategy when coping with negative emotions (Gilbert &Procter, 2006; Neff, 2003). Given