Comparison of the Effectiveness of Schema Therapy and Cognitive-behavioral Therapy on Depression in Children Aged 8 to 13 Years: A Pilot Study

Depression does not appear only in adulthood, but also in childhood. The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of schema therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy on depression in children aged 8 to 13 years.

The study was conducted as a semi-experimental study with a pre-test-post-test design with the participation of 31 male and female students aged 8 to 13 in a two-shift school in District 1 of Qom city in 2018. The participants were selected by simple random sampling method and randomly placed in three groups: schema therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy and control group. For the schema therapy experimental group, 90-minute sessions were held weekly for 16 weeks, and for the cognitivebehavioral therapy experimental group, 90-minute sessions were held weekly for 14 weeks. Measurements were taken before and after the intervention and four months after the last session. No intervention was done for the control group. The data were collected using Dusseldorf illustrated questionnaire for children (DISC) and Tischer children's depression scale and parents' long form (CDS). Data were analyzed using analysis of variance test with repeated measurements and SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 23.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, Ill., USA).

The mean (SD) depression score in the schema therapy group decreased from 97.3 (25.3) in the pretest to 83.5 (21.4) in the post-test and 82.3 (20.4) in the follow-up (P<0.001). The cognitive behavioural therapy group's depression decreased from 96.3 (25.2) in the pre-test to 89.5 (22.1) in the post-test and 90.9 (22.4) in the follow-up (P<0.001) too. In the control group, there was no difference between the pre-test, post-test, and follow-up. Compared to cognitive-behavioural therapy, schema therapy had more effective in reducing children's depression (P<0.001).

The study showed that both schema therapy and cognitive-behavioural therapy interventions reduced depression in children. But compared to cognitive-behavioural therapy, schema therapy had more effectiveness in the reduction of children's depression.