The Effectiveness of Schema Therapy with Schema Mode Approach on Reduce of Narcissism's Symptoms in Narcissistic Personality Disorder: A Single-Subject Research

Aim and People with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) have grandiosity feelings of self-importance, and are faced interpersonal problems and empathy. The present research aimed to study the effectiveness of schema mode therapy approach on the reduction of narcissism's symptoms in persons with NPD.
Methods and Materials: In this study, the A-B single-subject design with multiple baselines was used. The study sample was 3 clients (1 man and 2 women) referred to counseling clinic in Qazvin, Iran, and were selected by purposive sampling. After answering to the narcissistic personality inventory-40 (NPI-40), the clients were interviewed by a psychiatrist based on the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders-5th edition (DSM-5) criteria and were diagnosed as NPD. The research process was carried out according to the principles of the single subject experimental designs and to measure narcissism symptoms, Millon clinical multiaxial inventory-III (MCMI-III) was used. Schema therapy was administered in totally twenty 60-minute sessions, 2 sessions weekly. The follow-up period was considered one month after the end of treatment.
Findings: The obtained data were analyzed using descriptive statistics indexes including mean, median, visual analysis charts in two sections of internal and external with stability indicator, trend direction with the percentage of non-overlapping data (PND) and the percentage of overlapping data (POD). The results showed that schema therapy was effective in reducing symptoms of narcissism in people with NPD.
The Schema therapy effect on reducing the narcissism's symptoms of people with NPD was efficient and effective and can be used in the treatment of patients with this disorder.