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A Qualitative Study on the Emotional Healing Efficacy of Movies for Undergraduates Suffering Breakups

Published in 2016 by Chen Su-May Sheih, Wei-Ni Yeh
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Preprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Postprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Published version: policy unknown

Abstract

Breakups with significant others are among the main reasons for emotional disturbance problems in Taiwanese undergraduates. Most undergraduates lack emotional regulation; therefore, their negative emotions can easily accumulate, influencing their mental health. Exacerbating these effects, the accumulation of negative emotions can lead to social problems. Therefore, helping undergraduates appropriately cope with negative emotions generated by breakups is a topic worth exploring. Movie therapy involves watching appropriate movies for soothing negative emotions. To investigate the emotional healing efficacy of movies, this study employed content analysis to select movies about breakups and recruited 14 undergraduates suffering from breakups. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted after the subjects viewed one of the movies, and the emotional healing efficacy of movies was analyzed based on whether the subjects experienced the processes of identification, catharsis, and insight. The findings indicated that 14 movies had emotional healing efficacy. The subjects experienced emotional healing from movies that contained three critical elements: similarity of backgrounds between the viewer and the movie characters, the extroversive expression of the movie characters’ emotions, and the characters’ demonstration of concrete solutions to the problems. [Article content in Chinese]