The Effectiveness of Emotional Schema Therapy on Severity of Depression and Cognitive Emotional Regulation Strategies in Major Depression Disorder

Introduction: Major Depression disorder is the most common psychiatric disorder in which mood swings and sadness are prominent symptoms. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of emotional schema therapy on the severity of depression and cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Method: The present study was a pre-test, post-test design with a control group. Among the patients with major depressive disorder who were referred to health centers in Khoy city, 30 were selected and randomly and equally assigned to the experimental and control groups. The experimental group was exposed to 9 onehour treatment sessions, and the data were analyzed using the Beck questionnaire (BDI-II), Leahy emotional schema questionnaire (LESS), and short-form cognitive and emotional regulation strategies (CERQ-SF) in pre-test and post-test. They were collected and, after data collection, were analyzed using MANCOVA. Results: The results showed that emotional schema therapy between the two groups had a significant difference in the severity of depression F = 161.27, maladaptive strategies of cognitive emotion regulation F = 41.93, and adaptive strategies F = 31.13 at the level of 0.001. The effect size of emotional schema therapy for depression severity was 0.86, adaptive strategies 0.65, and maladaptive strategy 0.71. Conclusion: Emotional Schema Therapy as an Emerging Emotion-Focused Therapy can be used as an effective and efficient treatment to reduce depression and modify emotional schemas and cognitive regulation strategies