Comparing the Effectiveness ofGroup Schema Therapy and Emotional Couple Therapy on Couples' Maladaptive Schemas

Couples' relationships could always face difficulties for various reasons. In various studies, several causes have been listed, the most important of which are the cognitive and emotional functions affecting couples' communication framework. The objective of the present study was to compare the effectiveness of schema therapy and emotion-oriented couple therapy as a group on maladaptive couple schemas in Mashhad.

The present study was quasi-experimental with pre-test, post-test, follow-up design and a control group. Participants included 24 couples who were referred to counseling centers in Mashhad in 2018 and were selected by purposive sampling method and randomly placed in experimental and control groups, each group of eight couples. The instrument used in this study was the Young Schemas Questionnaire, which was administered in three rounds: pre-test, post-test, and follow-up. Emotion-based couple therapy intervention was performed for one of the two experimental groups, and schema therapy was performed for the other group. The members of the control group did not receive any intervention. Data were analyzed using repeated-measures analysis of variance via SPSS software version 21.

In the emotion-based couple therapy group, the mean (SD) of maladaptive schemas increased from 140.1 (16.9) in the pre-test to 101.6 (8.6) in the post-test and 99.8 (8.2) and decreased in the follow-up phase, (P<0.001). In theschema therapy group, the mean (SD) score of maladaptive schemas increased from 137.4 (17.1) in the pre-test to 94.9 (7.5) in the post-test and 94.9 (7.2) in the follow-up stage, P<0.001. The effectiveness of schema therapy on reducing maladaptive schemas was higher than emotion-focused couple therapy, P<0.05.

The study showed that both schema therapy and emotion-oriented couple therapy interventions reduced the maladaptive schemas of couples, but the effectiveness of schema-therapy was more than emotion-based couple therapy.