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

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 study was carried out with the purpose of comparing early maladaptive schemas and metacognitive 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 consultative centers of Tehran in 2015. The causal-comparative methodology was employed and 60 students with social phobia and 60 students with no psychiatric problems were selected as the samples of the study using the convenience (targeted) sampling method. Young schema questionnaire, Conover metacognitive beliefs and social phobia were employed for data collection. The research data were analyzed using multivariable 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 early maladaptive schemas and metacognitive beliefs (P < 0.01). Conclusions: It can be stated that the early maladaptive schemas have been less inefficient among the students with social phobia.