effectiveness of schema therapy in psychological distress, body image, and eating disorder beliefs in patients with anorexia nervosa

Background and objective: due to the role of recognition in eating disorders, the identification ofcore beliefs and cognitive schemas becomes debatable. this study aimed to determine theeffectiveness of schema therapy in psychological distress, body image, and eating disorder beliefs inanorexic patients.materials and methods: this was an applied quasi-experimental study with a pretest and posttestdesign and control group. the statistical population of the study included patients with an eatingdisorder, attending the psychological, clinical psychiatric, and obesity treatment centers in ahvaz,iran, within the age range of 16-23 years in 2019. the subjects were selected using the purposivesampling method. in this study, the pretest (i.e., filling out the eating disorder beliefs questionnaire[edbq]) was performed before the schema therapy intervention. then, the intervention wasconducted on the experimental group; however, no intervention was carried out for the controlgroup. after the termination of the treatment sessions (12 sessions of 45 min), the posttest wasperformed. finally, 3 months following the termination of the treatment, the follow-up test wasconducted. the data were obtained using the edbq, psychological distress questionnaire, andbody image concern inventory. the data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covarianceand spss software (version 22).results: the results of the present study showed that schema therapy led to a decrease in psychological distress (f=157.36, p<0.0001, eta=0.89), body image concern (f=8.03, p<0.001,eta=0.29), and eating disorder beliefs (f=1 3.85, p<0.0001, eta=0.91).conclusion: it can be concluded that schema therapy reduces psychological distress, body image concerns, and eating disorder beliefs.