Effectiveness of Schema Therapy on Frustration Tolerance and Bullying of 13- to 14-Year-Old Adolescents Living in Tehran City, Iran

Adolescents is a large group of population that plays a vital role in the future of the society, its overall growth, and development. The social and psychological evolutions of this period require indepepedence, personality development, freedom seeking, and acceptance by the peers. If these traits are ignored during adolescence, there will be a risk of many unhealthy behaviors. One of these unhealthy and dangerous behaviors is the occurrence of abnormalities such as deliberate self-harm and the occurrence of all kinds of personal or bullying violence. In recent years, many studies have been conducted on the types of violence, such as deliberate self-harm, personal violence, or bullying. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of Schema Therapy on reducing frustration and bullying in 13 to 14 years old adolescents living in in Tehran City, Iran.

The research method was quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest design and a control group. The statistical population consisted of high school male students studying in Tehran in 2018-19 academic year. The samples were collected by available sampling method. The statistical population of the study comprised 2500 male high school students in three districts of Tehran. In the first stage of sampling, 20 districts of Tehran were randomly selected. A total of 47 students had symptoms of bullying and frustration tolerance among which 30 were randomly selected. Then, 30 individuals who achieved the highest score in bullying and the lowest score in frustration tolerance were randomly assigned into two groups of experimental and control groups (15 boys in each group). The experimental group received 10 sessions of 60-minute Schema Therapy, while the control group received no training. Then the posttest was taken from both groups to compare the results of the two groups. A questionnaire was used to collect the data. With regard to nature and selection of research variables, the inclusion and exclusion criteria were determined. The inclusion criteria were not having mood disorders and hyperactivity, epilepsy, or severe mental disorders. The exclusion criteria were not attending the Schema Therapy sessions. The measurement tools were the Illinois bullying Questionnaire (2001 version) and Harrington's Failure Tolerance Questionnaire (2005). The questionnaire is scored on a 5-point Likert scale from 1=strongly agree to 5=strongly disagree. The content validity and reliability of questionnaires were assessed using the Cronbach alpha coefficient. Descriptive and inferential statistics such as covariance analysis were used to analyze the data and compare the mean difference. The data analyses were done in SPSS version 21 and all test were considered significant at p<0.005.

First, the normality of the data distribution was checked and confirmed using the Kalmogorov-Smirnov statistical test. The results of the M-box test also indicated the assumption of homogeneity of the variance-covariance matrices. Also, Bartlett's sphericity test indicated the existence of sufficient correlation between dependent variables. The assumption of homogeneity of variances in research variables was also confirmed using Levine's test; Therefore, all the assumptions of the statistical test of multivariate covariance analysis (Mancova) are valid and this test can be used for data analysis. The mean scores of the post-test of bullying and frustration tolerance in the subjects of the experimental group decreased compared to the mean scores of their pre-test; While the difference between the mean scores of the pre-test and post-test of the control group was insignificant. Schema therapy significantly reduced the mean of bullying (p<0.001 and F=43.88) and frustration tolerance (p<0.001 and F=26.63) in the post-test phase; So that 46% of bullying changes and 25% of failure tolerance changes were due to the effect of schema therapy.

The results showed that fracture tolerance increased in experimental group under the influence of Schema Therapy training. Schema therapy training is effective in increasing adolescent frustration. Also, under the influence of therapeutic schema training, adolescent bullying has decreased in the experimental group, we conclude that therapeutic schema training is effective in reducing adolescent bullying by 17 to 18 years.