Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Abstract
Background & Objectives: The damages of perfectionism in obsessive personality during COVID–19 pandemic need psychological treatments. The main symptom of an obsessive–compulsive personality is perfectionism. This symptom has intensity and weakness in the nurses of different hospital departments. Therefore, the treatment of perfectionism in the nursing group is considered important. This research responds to the impact of acceptance and commitment based on compassion and emotion–oriented schema therapy on the perfectionism of nurses. So far, no study has been done on perfectionism in emotion–oriented schema therapy. Considering the combination of emotion–oriented schema therapy and meta–diagnosis of perfectionism, this research seems necessary. Also, due to the similar diagnostic elements in the two treatments of acceptance and commitment therapy based on compassion and emotional schemas, no comparison has been made between these two treatments. So, this research investigated the effectiveness of emotion–oriented schema therapy and compassion–based acceptance and commitment therapy on the perfectionism of nurses with obsessive–compulsive personality traits working in the coronavirus ward.
Methods: This quasi–experimental study employed a pretest–posttest and follow–up design with a control group. The statistical population comprised the nurses working in the coronavirus departments of the social security hospitals of Karaj and Tehran cities, Iran, in 2021 and 2022. Of them, 40 nurses were selected using the available sampling method from Lavasani and Alborz hospitals who met the inclusion criteria. They were randomly assigned to two experimental groups and one control group. The inclusion criteria were as follows: not participating in other psychological interventions at the same time and lacking debilitating physical and mental illnesses (diagnosed by the researcher and using interviews). The exclusion criteria included the absence of more than three intervention sessions and non–observance of group therapy rules. For ten 120–minute sessions, the experimental groups underwent emotion–oriented schema therapy based on Leahy's program (2011) and compassion–based acceptance and commitment based on Tirch et al.'s (2014) program. This research used the Personality Inventory (Krueger et al., 2013) and the Tehran Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (Besharat, 2007) for data collection. Data analysis was carried out in two parts: descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. At the level of descriptive statistics, frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation were calculated. At the level of inferential statistics, variance analysis with repeated measurements and Bonferroni post hoc tests were performed. Data analysis was done using SPSS software version 24, and the significance level of the tests was considered to be 0.05.
Results: Results showed that the mean scores of self–oriented perfectionism and community–oriented perfectionism in the two groups of emotion–oriented schema therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy based on compassion therapy did not have a significant difference (p=1.000). However, there was a significant difference between the acceptance and commitment treatment group based on compassion and the control group in self–oriented perfectionism in the posttest stage (p<0.001) and follow–up (p=0.004) as well as between community–oriented perfectionism in the posttest (p=0.008) and follow–up (p=0.015). Also, the emotion–oriented schema therapy group showed a significant difference with the control group in self–oriented perfectionism in the posttest (p=0.003) and follow–up (p=0.031), as well as between community–oriented perfectionism in the posttest (p=0.036). Still, the effect of this intervention in the follow–up phase on community–oriented perfectionism was not significant (p=0.078).
Conclusion: The results of the study indicate the similar effect of compassion–based acceptance and commitment therapy and emotion–oriented schema therapy on the perfectionism of nurses. Considering the similarity of these two treatments in communication with the present, education in the field of emotion, and their deficiency in obsessive personality, they can be used as complementary treatments.