The Effectiveness of Group Schema Therapy on Reducing Death Anxiety Syndrome in Cardiovascular Patients

Anxiety can lead to heart disease in a 10-year interval, and heart disease, in turn, leads to anxiety; death anxiety. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of group schema therapy on reducing the death anxiety in cardiovascular patients.

The statistical population included all patients with cardiovascular disease referred to Tehran heart center. The sampling method was of convenience and the research design was semi-experimental with the experimental and control groups including pre-test and post-test. Initially, the data from the Templer death anxiety scale were collected from 113 individuals and after a primary evaluation 30 individuals (18 women and 12 men) from the participants who had the highest marks in the test were involved in the research and assigned randomly to two experimental and control groups. It was previously considered that the participants did not suffer from a nervous condition disturbing consciousness, such as head injury and dementia. Then, the members of the experimental group were intervened for 12 sessions of 90 minutes by group schema therapy and after that, they were evaluated again in terms of the degree of death anxiety. Data were analyzed by SPSS version 23.

The results showed that after the implementation of the schema therapy, the death anxiety level of the experimental group significantly decreased (p< 0.05, F= 147.4). Therefore, the hypothesis of the research on the effectiveness of group schema therapy on reducing death anxiety is confirmed.

This finding may contribute to the current research vacuum regarding death anxiety in cardiovascular patients as well as to clinical applications in the face of this phenomenon.