The Efficiency of Emotional Schema Therapy with Respect to Anxiety and Depression Symptoms and Signs in Patients Suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Introduction: comprehensive studies in iran showed that post-traumatic stress disorder is highly common among the survivors of the imposed war and most of them are in a vicious therapeutic cycle, frequently under long therapies which mostly have low effects.this study aims to examine the efficiency of emotional schema therapy on the emotional schema & cognitive emotion regulation strategies of patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd).methods: six patients were selected from the available sampling clients of the psychiatric clinic of the baqiyatallah hospital in tehran iran (2015), were matched together and then divided into 3 groups (emotional schema therapy (est) combined with medications, cognitive behavioral therapy combined with medications & medications). patients were examined 5 & 3 times by beck anxiety inventory (bai), beck depression inventory (bdi) and the persian versions of the impact of event scale-revise (ies-r). to analyze the data, indexes of effect size, cohen’s d, process changes, slope and interpretation of ups & downs in charts were employed.results: est and cbt (in post-treatment and follow-up phases) significantly decreased the anxiety and depression in the patients who received est and cbt and also could help to control the patients' signs and symptoms of ptsd. moreover, pharmacotherapy only had an effect on the control of anxiety and depressive signs and symptoms in post-treatment, but after the termination of pharmacotherapy, the patients experienced a recurrence of the signs and symptoms to some degree.conclusions: emotional schema therapy via directly targeting mechanisms of pathological emotional schemas & maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies can be an appropriate choice for treatment of ptsd.