PARANORMAL BELIEFS AS PREDICTORS OF MALADAPTIVE EMOTIONAL SCHEMAS IN YOUNG ADULTS WITH FUNCTIONAL NEUROLOGICAL SYMPTOM DISORDER

Abstract

There is severe threat of permanent impairment in young adults due to the effect of life stressors which bring cognitive and emotional downfall leading to functional neurological symptom disorder. The aim of this research was to measure paranormal beliefs along maladaptive emotional schemas in patients with functional neurological symptom disorder through structural equation modelling IBM SPSS (AMOS 26) analysis. Psychodynamic functions hypothesis theory was applied to describe the role of paranormal beliefs which were carried by the young patients suffering from this mysterious ailment. A purposive sample of 134 participants between 14 years to 24 years has been chosen to administer the questionnaires of RPBS (Tobacky, 2004) and LESS-II (Leahy, 2002) to assess paranormal beliefs and maladaptive emotional schemas respectively. The final results showed that the two-factor model with 10 items of LESS-II was the better fit with a model of seven factors with 26 items of RPBS. In the model, the index demonstrated good fit (X2=645.623, P<0.05, GFI=0.798, CFI=0.949, NFI=0.846, TLI=0.972, RMSEA=0.038, CMIN/df=1.407). It also showed great convergent validity and share approximately 30% of the variance. It is concluded that paranormal beliefs were positively significantly related to maladaptive emotional schemas and, only the belief of psi highly positively significantly predicted the maladaptive emotional schemas in functional neurological symptoms patients. The outcomes provide strong support for the clinical purpose to focus on the paranormal and schemas related to the patient’s perception during cognitive therapeutic approaches. Keywords: Paranormal Beliefs, Emotional Schemas, Functional Neurological Symptom Disorder, AMOS.