Comparison the Effectiveness of Cognitive-Analytical Therapy and Emotional Schema Therapy on Cognitive Emotion Regulation and Worry of Patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Abstract
Background and Objective: Generalized anxiety disorder can cause a decrease of cognitive emotion regulation and an increase of worry. Therefore, the aim of this study was to comparison the effectiveness of cognitive-analytic therapy and emotional schema therapy on cognitive emotion regulation and worry of patients with generalized anxiety disorder.
Methods and Materials: The current study was a semi-experimental with a pre-test, post-test and two month follow-up design with a control group. The statistical population of this study was all students with generalized anxiety disorder of Islamic Azad University of Ahvaz branch and Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz in 2023 year. The sample size was considered to be 20 people for each group, and these people were selected as samples after checking the inclusion criteria with the purposeful sampling method. The selected samples were randomly divided into three groups of 20 people, and the first and second experimental groups underwent 10 sessions of 90 minutes cognitive-analytical therapy and emotional schema therapy, respectively and the control group remained on the waiting list for training. Data were collected with questionnaires of generalized anxiety disorder (Spitzer et al., 2006), cognitive emotion regulation (Garnefski et al., 2001) and worry (Meyer et al., 1990) and with were analyzed by methods of chi-square, analysis of variance with repeated measurements and Bonferroni's post hoc test in the SPSS-26 software.
Findings: The results showed that there was no significant difference between the generalized anxiety disorder of experimental and control groups in terms of gender, educational level and age (P>0.05). Also, both methods of cognitive-analytical therapy and emotional schema therapy increased the positive strategies of cognitive emotion regulation and decreased the negative strategies of cognitive emotion regulation and worry in patients with generalized anxiety disorder, and the results remained in the follow-up phase (P<0.001). In addition, there was no significant difference between the two methods of cognitive-analytical therapy and emotional schema therapy in increasing the positive strategies of cognitive emotion regulation and decreasing the negative strategies of cognitive emotion regulation and worry of patients with generalized anxiety disorder (P<0.001).
Conclusion: The results of this study indicated the effectiveness of both methods of cognitive-analytical therapy and emotional schema therapy on increasing the positive strategies of cognitive emotion regulation and reducing the negative strategies of cognitive emotion regulation and worry in patients with generalized anxiety disorder. Therefore, counselors and therapists can use both methods to improve psychological characteristics.
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References
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