The Effectiveness of a Forgiveness Intervention on Mental Health in Bereaved Parents—A Pilot Study

The aim of this pilot study was to test the effectiveness of an educational forgiveness intervention on mental health in grieving parents. 21 grieving parents were randomly assigned to the experimental group (in which the educational forgiveness intervention occurred) and to the control group (in which a psycho-education grief intervention with a humanistic approach took place). Participants in both groups completed 12 individual hourly sessions for three months. The results showed that participants in the experimental group achieved statistically greater improvement in forgiveness towards others, self-forgiveness, and a greater decrease in depression in the post-test and follow-up test; a greater decrease in anxiety and anger in the post-test; as well as higher improvement in the post-traumatic growth in the follow-up test, four months after the end of the intervention. We highlight the potential benefits of using a forgiveness intervention with bereaved parents.

A Pilot Study for Forgiveness Intervention in Adolescents With High Trait Anger: Enhancing Empathy and Harmony

Forgiveness interventions benefit victims’ mental health, reduce levels of anger, and promote forgiveness. However, forgiveness interventions are rarely used to improve the offender’s anger and mental health, especially in specific situations such as juvenile correctional facilities. The offender is often also a victim, and reducing the offender’s excessive anger may prevent or decrease the likelihood of future interpersonal violence. This study examined the effects of forgiveness interventions on anger, forgiveness, empathy, and harmony of juvenile delinquents with high levels of trait anger. Eighteen adolescents with trait anger in a juvenile correctional facility volunteered to participate in group counseling. A pretest–posttest method of quasi-experimental design was used, with 8 participants in the intervention group and 10 in the control group; the intervention group received forgiveness group counseling, and the control group did not. The results revealed that the intervention group had significantly higher scores for forgiveness, empathy, and harmony than the control group, although no significant differences in the scores of state and trait anger were found. The forgiveness intervention had significantly improved the levels of forgiveness toward specific perpetrators of childhood victimization for the juvenile delinquents with high levels of trait anger, raising their levels of empathy and harmony; there was no significant increase in trait anger. The findings indicated that forgiveness intervention provides an effective way to improve the positive mental strength of adolescents with high levels of trait anger.

Changes after an Educational Intervention to Teach about and Promote Forgiveness among Seminarians and Practicing Clergy

Many studies of forgiveness have found that relatively short psychosocial interventions aimed at promoting forgiveness can result in noticeable increases in participants’ decisional and emotional forgiveness in their day-to-day lives. However, most of those interventions involve engagement in short psychoeducational experiential activities and participants want to forgive something. Less is known about a purely educational forgiveness intervention’s effects on participants’ subsequent knowledge and self-efficacy to promote forgiveness in their communities. This is important because educational lectures (without active engagement exercises) are often used in schools, seminars, sermons, and Christian education programs. Given the central focus of forgiveness in Christian religion and spiritual practice, we examined whether a 12-hour knowledge-based forgiveness intervention would predict increases to clergy members’ forgiveness knowledge and self-efficacy to preach about or promote forgiveness in their congregation. Intervention participants reported increased personal forgiveness, forgiveness knowledge, and intentions to make congregational forgiveness interventions in their future role as pastor. Confidence in forgiveness knowledge predicted greater intention to discuss and promote forgiveness in the congregation. Although tentative, our results suggest that providing knowledge about forgiveness might result in some personal forgiveness and increase future intentions to use forgiveness.

Promoting Forgiveness at a Christian College: A Comparison of the REACH Forgiveness and Forgive for Good Methods

The present study is the first randomized, controlled trial comparing REACH Forgiveness and Forgive for Good, two of the most commonly used approaches to promote forgiveness. Additionally, the combined effects of psychoeducation and a community forgiveness intervention were examined. Psychoeducation participants were 99 Luther College students randomly assigned to six hours of one of two types of forgiveness training led by undergraduate facilitators or a control condition. The community forgiveness intervention involved campus-wide modifications to the environment that were difficult for most students to not notice. Unforgiveness and forgiveness were measured at pre-, post-intervention, and two-month follow-up. Both forgiveness groups reported decreased unforgiveness and increased forgiveness pre- to post-intervention, and these gains were maintained at follow-up. Both methods were found to be equally effective, can be taught by undergraduates, and were effective in tandem with a community intervention.