Comparing the Effectiveness of Schema Therapy with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on Cognitive Avoidance in GAD patients

Objective: This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of schema therapy with acceptance and commitment therapy with exposure techniques on cognitive avoidance in female patients with generalized anxiety disorder. Methods: 10 women with generalized anxiety disorder were selected through purposeful sampling with Structured Clinical Interview for DSM Disorders (SCID-5). To determine the absence of Personality disorder Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III) (Millon and Groosman, 2005) was used. Schema therapy was conducted for 20 weekly sessions and ACT with exposure techniques for 12 weeks and follow-up 6 weeks. The Cognitive Avoidance Questionnaire (CAQ) (Sexton and Douglas, 2004) was used as pre-test and post-test, and to track the results. Analysis of variance with repeated measures was used to test the research hypotheses. Results: The results showed that schema therapy is more effective than ACT in the subscales of thought suppression (F=12.80, p=0.037) and avoidance of threatening (F=25.61, p=0.015), but they have no significant statistical difference in other subscales and total score. Both treatments significantly reduced the total score of cognitive avoidance, but they did not have a statistically significant difference. Conclusion: It is concluded that Schema therapy and ACT with exposure techniques are effective in reducing the severity of symptoms and improving cognitive avoidance in females with Generalized Anxiety Disorder.