Studying the Effect of Group-Based Schema Therapy on Social Phobia in the Female Students

The aim of this study was to identify the dominant early maladaptive schemas and the efficiency of group-based schema therapy on social phobia of the students. The method of the study was experimental, and its design was pretest-posttest control-group. In order to conduct this study in the identification scheme stage 30, and the treatment stage 16 students who had a social phobia were randomly selected. The subjects were randomized into two treatment (n = 8) and control groups (n = 8). The instruments used were social phobia and young schema questionnaire. The treatment group had 15 sessions (120 minutes) of group schema therapy and the control group had none. Data were analyzed using independent t-test. The results showed that group schema therapy reduces symptoms of social phobia, and emotional deprivation schema reduces abandonment/instability, failure, and sacrifice. In addition, sacrifice, strict standards/hyper criticism, insufficient self-control and self-discipline, social isolation/alienation, deficiency/shame, failure, and entitlement/grandiosity were identified as the most common schema. It seems that group schema therapy could be considered as an effective therapeutic approach in reducing the symptoms in students with social phobia.