The effectiveness of emotional schema therapy on the intolerance of uncertainty and the difficulty of emotion regulation in people suffering from comorbid depression and anxiety

Patients with depression and comorbid anxiety experience more complicated and higher levels of psychological harm than the ones without comorbidity.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of emotional schema therapy on the intolerance of uncertainty and the difficulty of emotion regulation in people suffering from comorbid depression and anxiety.

This study was a quasi-experimental research, applying a pre-test and post-test control group design. After interviewing a group of patients with depression and comorbid anxiety who attended counseling centers in Isfahan in 2019, 32 women participants were chosen. Then they were randomly assigned to two groups, including an experimental group and a control group. Each group consisted of 16 participants. The Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (1994) and the Emotion Regulation Difficulty Scale (2004) were used as the instruments of the study. The experimental group went through emotional schema therapy, which lasted for ten 90-minute sessions. The data analysis was performed through repeated measures ANOVA and Bonferroni's post hoc test, using SPSS-22.

The results of the study indicated that emotional schema therapy had a significant effect on uncertainty intolerance and emotion regulation difficulty in both intra- and inter-group status (P<0.01). The effect of this intervention lasted until the follow-up session. The effect size for uncertainty intolerance and emotion regulation difficulty were 0.324 and 0.430 respectively (P<0.01).

Emotional schema therapy as a unified treatment can improve trans-diagnostic factors of depression and comorbid anxiety. If proven in various studies in terms of applicability, this intervention can be pioneering in the treatment of depression and comorbid anxiety.