Effectiveness of Analytic Schema Therapy in Reducing Depressive Symptoms and Modulating Early Emotional Needs

Abstract

Aim and Background: Depression, as the most serious disease of the century, whose underlying factors play an important role in its formation and continuation, requires the design of treatments that have lasting effects. Based on this, the present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effectiveness of Analytical Schema Therapy (AST) in reducing depression symptoms and modulating early emotional needs Methods and Materials: The current research was conducted as a semi-experimental type with a pre-test-post-test design and a control group with a three-month follow-up. The statistical population of this research was selected students of Tehran in 2020. The sample size included 24 people who were selected by a targeted method from among those who volunteered for treatment and were randomly assigned to two experimental (12 people) and control (12 people) groups. AST therapeutic intervention was performed for the experimental group during thirty sessions, one session of 60 minutes per week. People in the control group did not receive treatment at this time. The questionnaires used in this research included the Beck depression questionnaire (Beck, 1961) and the early emotional needs questionnaire (Ghaderi et al, 2021). The data obtained from this research were analyzed by the method of variance analysis with repeated measurement and using SPSS 25.0 software. Findings: The results showed that AST treatment has a significant effect on reducing depression symptoms and modulating emotional needs (p<0.001). Conclusions: According to the obtained results, it can be concluded that AST treatment, with the development of techniques aimed at adjusting emotional needs, can be used as an effective intervention to reduce depression symptoms and adjust early emotional needs.

Keywords

• analytic schema therapy
• depressive symptoms
• early emotional needs.