Comparing the Effectiveness of the Native Schema Therapy With Young Schema Therapy on Early Maladaptive Schemas and Attitudes Toward Infidelity of Conflicting Couples

The health and dynamism of the family and society are rooted in the health and vitality of couples. One of the issues that is of special importance in the study of couples' relationships is schemas. Schemas are formed in the early years of life and affect a person's life in the later years of adulthood. Schema therapy has been effective in most studies, but the major drawback of schema therapy in our country is the lack of its complete consistency with our native culture. Cultural schemas are dependent on the culture and different from one culture to another; of course, they can also overlap. Despite various schematic therapy models from foreign sources, it seems that the use of indigenous schematic therapy that is consistent with Iranian culture will help solve the problems of conflicting Iranian couples. This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of indigenous schema therapy with Young's schema therapy on early maladaptive schemas and attitudes toward infidelity in conflicting couples.

In terms of purpose, this study was applied and in terms of methodology, quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest and follow-up design with a control group. The study population comprised all couples with conflicts referred to counseling centers in Isfahan City, in 2017. Forty-eight eligible individuals from this population volunteered for the study and then were randomly divided into three groups (native schema therapy, Young therapy schema, and control group). The inclusion criteria were as follows: filing a case in the family counseling centers of Isfahan city, less than one year has passed since the filing of the case, education at least diploma, not participating in other psychological treatments at the same time, Not suffering from mental disorders, lacking a history of psychosis, mania, hypomania or any other diagnosed personality disorder, and not taking drugs, drugs or alcohol. The exclusion criteria were as follows: lack of therapeutic motivation (according to the therapist's diagnosis and based on not following up and not doing therapy assignments), absence of more than two sessions in schema therapies, and decision to divorce. Individuals in all three groups were assessed in three stages: pretest, posttest, and follow-up by the Early Maladaptive Schema Scale (EMSS) (Young, 2005) and Attitudes Toward Infidelity Scale (Whatley, 2008). For the first experimental group, the native schema therapy was implemented in fourteen 90-minute sessions and for the second experimental group, Young's schema therapy was implemented in fourteen 90-minute sessions. The analysis of the collected data was done through descriptive statistics of central tendency and dispersion indicators (mean, standard deviation, and standard error) for the research groups in the pretest, posttest and follow-up. Also, at the level of inferential statistics, repeated measurement variance analysis and the Bonferroni post hoc test were used at the minimum acceptable significance level equal to 0.05. All analyses were performed using SPSS version 24 software.

In the attitude to infidelity, the effects of time (p<0.001), group (p<0.001), and the interaction of time and group (p<0.001) were significant. Also in maladaptive schemas, the effects of time (p<0.05), group (except for the schemas of mistrust, vulnerability to the detriment, self-sacrifice) (p<0.05) and the interaction of time and group (p<0.05) were significant. Comparing the effectiveness of the two therapies, the results showed a significant difference between the effectiveness of the indigenous schema-therapy package with Young's schema-therapy on reducing attitudes toward infidelity (p=0.022) and social isolation (p=0.048), but no significant difference (p>0.05)between them on emotional deprivation, rejection, shame, failure, dependence, entanglement, information, self-sacrifice, emotional inhibition, stubbornness, bigotry, inadequate self-discipline, acceptance, negativity, and punishment. Also, native schema therapy and Young schema therapy were not effective in reducing distrust and vulnerability to the detriment schemas (p>0.05).

Based on the study’s findings, interventions of native schema therapy and Young schema therapy lead to a reduction of initial maladaptive schemata and attitudes of infidelity in conflicting couples. However, the native schema therapy is more effective than Young's schema therapy.