The Effectiveness of Group Schema Therapy to Enhance the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies in Women Undergoing Bariatric Surgery During COVID-19

Abstract

Abstract Background: Emotions, attitudes, and behaviors toward eating play a very important role in obesity and according to a schema-based approach; patients with obesity learn some coping strategies since childhood to cope with the schemas. So, this study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of group schema therapy on the cognitive emotion regulation (CER) strategies in women who underwent bariatric surgery during COVID-19.Methods: Forty women who underwent bariatric surgery were selected and were randomly divided into two groups of control and experimental. The experimental group received ten 90-min sessions of group schema therapy. Both groups completed the CER questionnaire during pre-test, post-test and follow-up stages and data were analyzed using a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) in SPSS software (version 20). Results: Our results indicated that the differences between two groups in variables of adaptive CER strategies (P = 0.0001, F = 31.15) and maladaptive CER strategies (P = 0.001, F = 9.42) were significant.Conclusions: The findings demonstrated that group schema therapy training can lead to increases adaptive CER strategies and decrease maladaptive CER strategies in women undergoing bariatric surgery.Trial registration: IRCT, IRCT20180523039802N2. Registered 5 August 2020, http://www.irct.com/IRCT20180523039802N2