Effects of Emotional Schema Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy on Cognitive Emotion Regulation in Patients with Bipolar II Disorder

Background: Patients with bipolar disorder suffer from different problems, including emotional disorders, e.g., the loss of emotional self-regulation. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the effects of emotional schema therapy and dialectical behavior therapy on emotional self-regulation in patients with bipolar II disorder (BP-II). Methods: This was an experimental study with a pretest-posttest design and a control group. The research population comprised patients with BP-II who visited the counseling and psychology centers of Dezful (Iran) in 2022. A sample of 45 eligible patients was purposively selected and randomly allocated to three groups. Each of the two experimental groups received twelve 90-minute sessions of emotional schema therapy and eleven 90-minute sessions of dialectical behavior therapy, while the control group was on the waiting list. The data were collected using the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) and analyzed using the analysis of covariance with the Bonferroni post-hoc test in SPSS v. 26. Results: In the emotional schema therapy group, the mean ± standard deviation (SD) of the post-test scores of adaptive and maladaptive emotional self-regulation were 20.60 ± 2.99 and 12.66 ± 2.22, respectively. Moreover, in the dialectical behavior therapy group, the mean ± SD of the post-test scores of adaptive and maladaptive emotional self-regulation were 21.60 ± 3.33 and 14.13 ± 2.35, respectively. Both interventions significantly reduced maladaptive emotional self-regulation and significantly increased adaptive emotional self-regulation in the patients with BP-II, compared to the control group (P < 0.001). Conclusions: Emotional schema therapy and dialectical behavior therapy improved emotional self-regulation in patients with BP-II. Therapists and healthcare professionals can thus administer both methods and other effective methods to improve health-related traits, especially self-regulation, in patients with BP-II.