Effectiveness of Emotional Schema Therapy on Improvement in Cognitive -Emotion Regulation in Attempting to Self-Mutilation Soldiers

Given the high prevalence of self-mutilation during military service as an important and sometimes stressful period for young people, it is essential to identify the interventions that prevent or reduce this problem. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of Emotional Schema Therapy on improving cognitive emotion regulation in the soldiers with self-mutilation attempts.

This study was conducted following a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental study design in 2019. The participants in this study consisted of 20 soldiers who referred to (505 Army Psychiatric Hospital) and were selected using availability sampling assigned to two groups, the experimental group and the control group awaiting treatment (10 in each group). Participants in the experimental group received 10 sessions of Emotional Schema Therapy for 90 minutes per week, and participants in the control group awaiting treatment did not receive any intervention. The instruments used in this study included Inventory of statements about self-injury (ISAS), Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ), Leahy Emotional Schema Scale (LESS), and a researcher-made demographic information questionnaire.

The mean ages of soldiers in the experimental and control groups were 19.7±1.6 and 19.5±1.7 years old, respectively. All participants were male and single. The results obtained from Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) confirmed the effect of Emotional Schema Therapy on reducing self-mutilation attempts (75%) and increased cognitive emotion regulation (76-89 percent) in soldiers (P<0.01).

According to the findings of the present study, it is suggested that Emotional Schema Therapy was effective and psychologists in military counseling centers after completing the necessary training courses, use the emotional schema therapy approach to treat and reduce self-mutilation attempts in soldiers.