Aim and Background: An integrated therapeutic approach, which is a cognitive behavioral approach focused on emotion and whose main purpose is emotional processes, and is applicable to disorders that have strong emotional components. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of emotional regulation-based intervention on cognitive emotion regulation strategies and alexithymia in patients with Coronary Heart Disease (CHD).

Methods and Materials: The method of this study was a clinical trial. The statistical population of this study included all patients with CHD referred to the heart center of Tehran between June and August. Of these, 30 volunteers were randomly divided into two experimental and control groups. To collect data, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) were used. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multivariate covariance analysis (MANCOVA) using SPSS software version 22.

Findings: Results shows that emotional regulation intervention was effective on positive cognitive emotional regulation (F=11.19, P<004), negative cognitive emotional regulation (F=7.83, P<0.02), and alexithymia (F=10.87, P<0.006) in patients with CHD.

Conclusions: This study showed that emotion regulation intervention based on integrated treatment method was effective on cognitive emotional regulation strategies and alexithymia in patients with CHD. The results of this study can be helpful researcher and therapists' alexithymia in the field of factors influencing it in patients with CHD.