Comparison of Episodic Future Thinking in Individuals with Depression and Anxiety Symptoms and Normal Individuals

Introduction: Episodic future thinking refers to the capacity to imagine experiences that might happen in one's personal future can be affected by anxiety and depression. Aim: The present study was aimed to compare the Episodic Future Thinking in Individuals with Depression and Anxiety Symptoms and Normal Individuals. Methods: The research design was causal-comparative. The study population consists of high school students in Langroud city in the academic year 1394-95. In this study, 90 students with a mean age of 16.61 year were selected by multistage cluster sampling. In order to collect information were used from the Episodic Future Thinking task and the Anxiety Inventory and the Beck Depression Inventory. Then, the data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and the post-hoc test. Results: Results of ANOVA and HSD indicate that group with depression symptoms and normal individuals represent significantly different in plausibility and arousal negative index. Also, there were significant differences in the arousal negative index, details positive index, details neutral index between normal and anxiety Symptoms groups. In addition, there were significant differences in the plausibility and details neutral index between normal and depression Symptoms groups. Conclusion: As a result, it may be said that depression and anxiety symptoms leading to changes in episodic future thinking indexes.