Effect of Schema Therapy on Using Adaptive and Maladaptive Cognitive-Emotion Regulation Strategies in People With HIV

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is important because of the social and labeling problems, and the prevalence of a variety of psychological, family, and social problems can be observed in these individuals.

The aim of this study, in order to promote mental health, is to investigate the effectiveness of schema therapy on adaptive and maladaptive strategies of cognitive-emotional regulation of people living with HIV (PLWH).

The research is an interventional study that used a pretest-posttest design and control group. Thirty people were selected by convenience sampling method and randomly divided into two groups, experimental and control. Garnefski et al.'s cognitive-emotional regulation (CERQ-SF) questionnaire was used. The experimental group received ten two-hour sessions of group treatment with Young's schema therapy model. To analyze the data, mean and standard deviation (SD) and analysis of covariance were used by SPSS 26 and P<0/05.

The results analysis of covariance showed that group treatment schema therapy improved the extent of adaptive strategies (acceptance, positive refocusing, refocusing on planning, positive reappraisal, and broader perspective) and maladaptive strategies (self-blame and catastrophic perception), (p<0.001), However, there was not any improve in terms of blaming others, (P<0/033) and rumination (P<0/102).

Schema therapy has increased the use of adaptive strategies and decreased maladaptive cognitive-emotional strategies (self-blame and catastrophic perception) in PLWH.