The Effectiveness of Vaginismus-Specific Schema Therapy on the Fear of Intimacy in Women with Vaginismus Disorder

Vaginismus disorder is the second most common sexual dysfunction in women. Therefore, a therapeutic strategy that specifically deals with the symptoms and psychological problems caused by it will be the way forward. Therefore, the present study was performed with the aim of the effectiveness of vaginismus-specific schema therapy on the fear of intimacy in women with vaginismus disorder.

This research was a semi-experimental study with a pretest, posttest and follow-up design with a control group. In the winter of the year 2022, a statistical society of women with vaginismus symptoms referred to the midwifery clinic and women's hospital of Piambaran in Tehran. Among them, 45 individuals were purposefully selected and divided into three groups, each consisting of 15 participants. Descutner & Thelen (1991) fear of intimacy questionnaire was used to measure the dependent variable. Two experiment groups were treated in 10 sessions of 90 minutes each, and the control group did not receive any intervention. The data were analysed using variance analysis of repeated measures and Bonferroni's post-hoc test in SPSS software-22.

Both vaginismus-specific schema therapy and common schema therapy affected reducing the perceived fear of intimacy in women with vaginismus disorder compared to the control group (p<0.001). According to the comparison of the difference between the averages of the two intervention groups and the control group, the vaginismus-specific schema therapy had a greater effect on the improvement of the fear of intimacy than the common schema therapy (p<0.001).

The results of the research showed that the new schema therapy package for vaginismus can reduce the fear of intimacy among women with vaginismus by identifying their problems.