The effect of online group schema therapy on quality of life, emotion regulation, anxiety, depression and schema modes in patients with fibromyalgia

The research was designed according to the experimental design in order to examine the effects of online schema group therapy on schema mode, quality of life, pain level, difficulty in emotion regulation, depression and anxiety levels. People who were diagnosed with FMS (fibromyalgia syndrome) and who had complaints about the disease continued were included in the study. Sessions were conducted semi-structured on the framework of Schema Group Therapy, from the perspective of the concept of mode, adding schema therapy training, mode awareness, mode management, experiential mode studies. The study continued for a total of 10 weeks, with 20 sessions, 2 days a week, for 2 hours. In addition to the online group sessions, 5 individual Schema Therapy sessions of 50 minutes were conducted every two weeks for each group member simultaneously. In the research, "pretest/posttest experimental model with control group" was studied, which is one of the real experimental models. Emotion Regulation Difficulty Scale (DDS), Fibromyalgia Impact Questioning Scale (FES), Fibromyalgia Visual Anolog Scale (VAS), Schema Mode Scale (SHME), Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) (Depression and anxiety sub-dimension) were used as data measurement tools in data collection. . The scales were applied to the participants in the experimental group and control group as a pretest measurement, a posttest measurement, and a follow-up test measurement after 45 days. The scales were given to the FMS patients participating in the study before and after the experiment; In addition, it was applied to the experimental group again 6 weeks (45 days) after the end of group therapy. The data obtained from the research were analyzed with frequency, t test and repeated measurement tests. The results of the research; There is no significant difference between the mean scores of the first measurements (pre-test) of the participants in the experimental group and the control group, except for the congruent submissive mode sub-factor found in the mode scale. In the study, it was determined that while there was a significant difference between the pretest and posttest score measurements of the schema mode, quality of life, pain level, depression and anxiety levels of the participants in the experimental group, the posttest measurements were significantly lower than the pretest measurements. The scores of the control group's pretest/posttest measures of schema mode, quality of life, pain level, difficulty in emotion regulation, depression and anxiety levels were not statistically significant. No statistical significance was found in the measurements of schema mode, quality of life, pain level, difficulty in emotion regulation, depression and anxiety levels of the experimental group, and in the follow-up measurements made after 45 days. It was determined that the gains obtained in the research continued for 45 days, even when there was no application. The general conclusion reached in line with these results; It was observed that thanks to the schema group therapy program, besides the level of maladaptive modes on FMS patients, also the levels of both depression and anxiety decreased. While the level of adaptive mode increased, the decrease in the quality of life due to fibromyalgia changed positively, and the pain level of the patients decreased. In the study, no significant change was observed in the measurements only in emotion regulation skills. Within the scope of the research, according to the conducts, the different maladaptive areas were positively affected, but the emotion regulation skills were not affected in any way. Actually it was thought that the measurement was limited because of the lack of the related scales and the limited number of people in the experimental group. For this reason, the effect of the schema group therapy on emotion regulation should be tested on larger samples with different studies to be carried out in the future.