Comparing the Effects of Individual and Group Schema Therapy on Depression and Anxiety in Adolescents

Depression and anxiety are among the major problems that occur to adolescents during the teenage years and require special attention. The structural and psychological changes that occur during adolescence are major developmental crises. Professionals have also stated that mental health problems, as well as personality and behavioral patterns of individuals, are difficult to change in adulthood; thus, timely measures to diagnose mental health conditions in children and adolescents are among the main concerns of the mental health system. Schema therapy assumes that experiences based on neglect and abuse in childhood can form early maladaptive schemas. Schema therapy is performed in two modes; individually and in the group. Moreover, evaluating the effectiveness of each model seems to be helpful to more promptly reach the therapeutic applications of this approach. Therefore, this study aimed to compare the effects of individual and group schema therapy on depression and anxiety in female adolescents.

This was a quasi–experimental research with pretest–posttest and a control group design. The statistical population of this study was all female 9th–grade high school students in Ghods City, Iran, in the 2019–2020 academic year. Of them, 45 students were selected by the convenience sampling method and randomly assigned into 3 groups, as follows: individual schema therapy, group schema therapy, and control. The inclusion criteria of the present study were living together with both parents and the absence of a conditional semester in the student's resume. The exclusion criteria of the study included disabilities and chronic physical illnesses, severe mental illnesses, receiving psychotherapy or medication over the past year, and refusing to continue cooperation. The study subjects completed Beck Depression Inventory (Beck et al., 1961) and Beck Anxiety Inventory (Beck et al., 1988) at pretest and posttest phases. Young et al.’s schema therapy package (2006) was conducted in 12 individual sessions and 12 group sessions, each lasting 90 minutes per experimental group. In the present study, descriptive statistics (frequency, frequency percentage, mean, & standard deviation) and inferential statistics, including Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and Bonferroni post hoc test were applied in SPSS to analyze the obtained data. The significance level of the tests was considered 0.05.

The present study results suggested that after eliminating the pretest effects for depression and anxiety, there was a significant difference in posttest scores between the study group of group–based schema therapy, individual schema therapy, and control (p<0.001). Individual and group schema therapy reduced the explored adolescents’ depression (p<0.001) and anxiety (p<0.001), compared to the controls; however, there was no significant difference between the groups of individual and group schema therapy concerning depression (p=0.810) and anxiety (p=0.293).

The obtained data indicated that schema therapy, both individually and in groups, is effective in reducing depression and anxiety among adolescents.