comparison of the effectiveness of intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy (istdp) and schema therapy on mothers of 5-6-year-old children with separation anxiety

Background: one of the most common anxiety disorders among children is separation anxiety disorder. objectives: the present study aimed to compare the effectiveness of intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy (istdp) and schema therapy on mothers of 5 to 6-year-old children with separation anxiety. methods: the study was a quasi-experimental research with pre-test, post-test, follow-up, and control groups. the statistical population was all mothers of 5-6-year-old children with separation anxiety in shahin shahr, isfahan, in 2023. of these, 45 people were selected by purposive sampling based on two standard deviations above the average of separation anxiety in the spence children’s anxiety scale parent version and other research inclusion criteria. they were randomly assigned to two experimental and one control group (n=15 each). one experimental group received ten sessions of 90-minute schema therapy weekly. the second experimental group also received ten sessions of 90 minutes of istdp weekly, and the control group received no intervention. the research instruments included the spence children’s anxiety scale parent version, which the mothers completed in three stages: pre-test, post-test, and 3-month follow-up. data were analyzed using repeated variance measures, mixed design, and bonferroni’s post-hoc test. results: the results showed that both treatments improved the children’s separation anxiety. however, the effectiveness of istdp on mothers has been more effective in enhancing the children’s separation anxiety (p<0.05). the efficacy of both treatments has been stable. conclusion: both treatments, especially istdp on mothers, can be used to improve the children’s separation anxiety.