Comparison of Early Maladaptive Schemas and Metacognitive Beliefs between the Students with Social Phobia and the ones with no Psychiatric Problems

Abstract

Abstract Background: Researchers believe that the early maladaptive schemas act as refiners to approve the childhood’s experiences and will lead to some clinical symptoms like anxiety, depression, phobia, personality disorders, alcohol abuse, overeating or stomach ulcers. Objectives: The present studywas carried outwith the purpose of comparing earlymaladaptive schemas andmetacognitive beliefs between the students with social phobia and the ones with no psychiatric problems in the universities of Tehran. Methods: The statistical population included all the patients referred to the therapeutic, psychiatric, psychological and consulta- tive centers of Tehran in 2015. The causal-comparativemethodology was employed and 60 students with social phobia and 60 stu- dents with no psychiatric problems were selected as the samples of the study using the convenience (targeted) samplingmethod. Young schema questionnaire, Conovermetacognitive beliefs and social phobiawere employed for data collection. The researchdata were analyzed usingmultivariable analysis of variance (MANOVA) test. Results: The obtained results showed that there was a significant difference between the students with social phobia and the ones with no psychiatric problems in terms of earlymaladaptive schemas andmetacognitive beliefs (P < 0.01). Conclusions: It can be stated that the earlymaladaptive schemas have been less inefficient among the studentswith social phobia.