Early maladaptive schemas in patients with bipolar and unipolar disorder

Abstract

Objective: The aim of our study is to determine the difference between the bipolar disorder, unipolar disorder and control groups in terms of maladaptive schemes and childhood trauma.

Methods: Two groups of patients under monitoring with a diagnosis of bipolar or unipolar disorder and one group of healthy controls were enrolled in this study. Each group consisted of 60 subjects. The Young Mania Rating Scale and Beck Depression Inventory were used to confirm that patients were in remission. The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and Young Schema Questionnaire-Short Form 3 were used to identify childhood traumas and early maladaptive schemas.

Results: In bipolar disorder, a positive, low power correlation was observed between the vulnerability to threats schema and emotional, physical and sexual abuse. In the unipolar disorder group, there was a positive, low power correlation between the emotional inhibition, failure, approval seeking, dependence, abandonment and defectiveness schemas and social isolation, and a positive, moderate correlation between social isolation and emotional abuse.

Conclusions: Individuals with bipolar disorder suffered greater childhood trauma compared to subjects with unipolar disorder and healthy individuals. Greater maladaptive schema activation were present in individuals with bipolar disorder compared to those with unipolar disorder and healthy individuals.

Keywords:

• Early maladaptive schema
• childhood trauma
• bipolar disorder
• unipolar disorder

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Carl Nino Rossini for his linguistic consultation of the paper.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.