The Effectiveness of Schema Therapy on Self-Blame and Cognitive Avoidance in People with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

The present study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of schema therapy on self-blame and cognitive avoidance in individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder. The research method was quasi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design and a control group. The statistical population of the study was all women referring to neighborhood counseling centers in District 22 of Tehran in 1402, from which a sample of 30 women who scored high on the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Questionnaire (Y-BOCS, Yale-Brown, 1986) was selected through convenience sampling and randomly assigned to two groups (experimental group and control group) with 15 women in each group. First, both groups were assessed using the Self-Blame Scale (SBS, Gilbert et al., 2004) and the Cognitive Avoidance Scale (CAQ, Sexton and Dugas, 2008). Then the experimental group underwent the schema therapy intervention of Young and Klosko (2003) for 8 sessions. The collected data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance tests. The results of the data analysis showed that by controlling the pre-test effect, there was a significant difference at the 0.05 level between the mean post-test of self-blame and cognitive avoidance in the two groups. Therefore, it can be concluded that schema therapy was effective in reducing self-blame and cognitive avoidance in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder.