The effectiveness of emotional schema therapy on the severity of depression, emotional dysregulation and emotional schemas in patients with major depressive disorder

Introduction: Major depression disorder is one of the most common psychological disorders that is often characterized by anhedonia, low mood, lethargy, distraction, changes in sleep and appetite and suicidal ideation. Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of emotional schema therapy on the severity of depression, emotional dysregulation and emotional schemes of patients with major depressive disorder. Method: The present study was an experimental study with a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The study population was patients with depression who referred to health centers in Khoy in 2020. 30 of them were randomly selected and assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group underwent 9 one-hour treatment sessions. Data were collected using Beck Depression Questionnaire (BDI-II), Emotional Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) and Leahy Emotional Schemas Questionnaire (LESS-II). Data collection was analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance in SPSS-26 software. Results: The results of post-test scores of depression intensity, suppression, reappresial and adaptive and non-adaptive emotional schema showed that there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups (p<0.001). The effect size of emotional schema therapy was to reduce the severity of depression (0.86), repression (0.63), re-evaluation (0.69), adaptive emotional schemas (0.74) and non-adaptive emotional schemas (0.78). Conclusion: Emotional schema therapy as an emerging emotion-focused therapy can be used as an effective and efficient treatment to reduce depression, emotional dysregulation, and correct emotional schemas.