Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Abstract
Background & Objectives: Divorce rates have surged globally, but the term "emotional divorce" isn't formally recognized. Couples in such situations often strive to maintain the appearance of a family, though internally, the family lacks substance. Without love and fulfillment, their marriage grows cold and distant. This lack of satisfaction can seriously impact the mental health of both partners. Hence, this study aimed to compare the efficacy of schema therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy in enhancing emotional self-regulation among women experiencing emotional divorce.
Methods: The current study utilized a quasi-experimental design with a pretest-posttest approach and a two-month follow-up, including a control group. The research population comprised all women experiencing emotional divorce who sought help from psychology and counseling centers in Rasht City, Iran, in 2023. From this group, 45 eligible volunteers were selected through purposive sampling and randomly assigned to three groups: schema therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and a control group, each consisting of 15 participants. The inclusion criteria for participants were satisfaction with attending the training sessions, minimum literacy, age between 25 and 45 years, no drug addiction, a score greater than 12 on Gutman's Emotional Divorce Questionnaire, and a score less than 108 on the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. Exclusion criteria included missing more than two sessions, participating in other courses or therapeutic interventions concurrently with the study, and having chronic or severe physical or mental illness. Data were collected using the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire developed by Garnefski in 2006. To measure the concurrent criterion validity of this questionnaire, the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) was used, with a reported correlation of 0.61 and Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of 0.91. The schema therapy intervention was conducted with the first experimental group over 10 sessions, each lasting 90 minutes, once a week. The acceptance and commitment therapy intervention was delivered to the second experimental group over 8 sessions, each lasting 120 minutes, once a week. The control group did not receive any psychotherapy during this period. After administering the post- and follow-up tests, the collected research data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance and Bonferroni post hoc test in SPSS26 software, with a significance level of 0.05.
Results: The results indicated that in the pre-test phase, there was no difference in emotional self-regulation scores among the schema therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and control groups (p>0.05). Hence, all three groups were comparable. However, in the post-test phase, a significant difference in emotional self-regulation scores was observed between the intervention groups and the control group (p<0.001). This suggests that both intervention groups were more effective than the control group in improving emotional self-regulation among women experiencing emotional divorce. Moreover, there was no significant difference between the effectiveness of schema therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy on emotional self-regulation (p>0.05), indicating that both interventions were equally effective. Finally, at the follow-up stage, the improvements remained consistent across the groups (p>0.05).
Conclusion: The findings of the current study revealed that both schema therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy effectively enhanced the emotional self-regulation of women experiencing emotional divorce, with neither method proving superior to the other. It is recommended that couples and family therapists incorporate these therapeutic approaches as practical and effective strategies to improve emotional self-regulation, thereby preventing or addressing emotional divorce in couples.