Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

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Background and objective: Marriage is the first emotional commitment and legal rights that adults admit and also, as the greatest social formulation for achieving the emotional and safety needs of individuals, has always been considered. With the growing complexity of marriage and family, there is abundant literature on marital relationships and marital quality and an emerging understanding of how marriage might influence the health and well-being. The understanding marital relationship is also very timely given the changes the institution of marriage has been witnessing over the last several decades. The link between “better” or “worse” marriages and “sickness and health” has been a subject of much empirical interest over the last half-century. Being married contributes to concordance in health behaviors over time between spouses. Moreover, marital support may also buffer against the impact of non-marital stressors on health behaviors and increase personal resources (i.e., self-efficacy, self-regulatory capacity) needed for initiating and maintaining health behavior change. The marital strain may add or interact with non-marital stressors leading to increased use of health-compromising behaviors to cope with such stressors and decreasing personal resources that could be used during change attempts. Marital quality is inversely associated with psychological distress. Marital distress has both concurrent and longitudinal associations with psychological distress. In addition, marital problems predict the onset of psychopathology, including mood and anxiety. Symptoms like lack of motivation and fatigue may promote maladaptive health behaviors (i.e., sedentary behavior, poor diet and sleep). Marital commitment refers to the extent to which couples are attached to one another and desire to maintain long‐term marriages, is a key indicator of well-being. A number of studies have shown that separated and divorced couples experience greater risk for mental and physical health problems, as well as can have strong negative consequences for their children, such as impacting their children’s mental health, academic and social performance. Since marriage instability is detrimental to the family unit and society, the importance of identifying the factors that promote marital commitment is overwhelmingly obvious. Although there is substantial literature on the interpersonal predictors for divorce and relationship stability, several important gaps can be identified in the field. Previous research has focused extensively on the impact of negative factors, and has not paid sufficient attention to the role of positive interpersonal processes in marriage dissolution, such as Communication patterns and personality traits such as self-differentiation. The purpose of this study was to predict marital commitment based on relationship patterns with mediatory of self-differentiation.
 
Methods: The research method was descriptive correlational and the statistical population of this study included married women and men referred to counseling and psychological centers of Tehran in 2018. 400 male and female married women from Tehran counseling centers were selected by the available sampling method. The study tools were Marital Commitment Inventory (Adams & Jones, 1997), Differentiation of Self Inventory (Skowron & Schmitt, 2003) and Communication Patterns Questionnaire (Christensen & Sullaway, 1984). To analyze the data, SPSS and Amos software, structural equation modeling, maximum likelihood and the significant level of 0.05 were used.
Results: Constructive communication patterns (P=0.001, β=0.369) and self-differentiation (P=0.001, β=0.540) were able to predict marital commitment directly and significantly. Avoidance communication pattern negatively and significantly (P=0.001, β=-0.121) and constructive communication pattern positively and significantly (P=0.001, β=0.186) were able to predict marital commitment with the mediatory of self-differentiation.
Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, constructive communication patterns and avoidant non-constructive communication patterns were able to predict marital commitment through self-differentiation. It can be said that a healthy relationship is important to run a family. The degree of differentiation and how women and husbands communicate to each other affects the development of relationships and marital satisfaction, as well as the extent of their commitment. High-level differentiation helps one's emotional and mental systems to function properly. In order to have a successful marriage and succeed in relationships, couples must use a constructive communication model and less of a mutual avoidance model. Differentiated individuals respond better to stress and life problems using constructive communication patterns. With proper thinking, they control emotions, but they allow human emotions and are skilled in human communication.
 

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Background and objective:

The effective factors on marital adjustment include personal traits, situational factors and life events. However, the studies conducted so far have shown that different cognitive media affect and direct the marital relations framework. As cognitive media, early maladaptive schemas, introduced by Young, originate from the individual's life events and differentiation as a personal trait seems to be a good predictive for marital adjustment. On this account, this study aims at predicting the marital adjustment in pre-marriage counseling sessions by studying the relationship between early maladaptive schemas and differentiation with marital adjustment.

Methodology: the research is a descriptive-analytic study with correlation plan. The population of the study included all married individuals in Tehran with an estimated sample of 400 people. Sampling was a multiphase and accessible method in a way that primarily 5 regions were randomly selected among 22 zones in Tehran following by a random selection of counseling clinics, schools and culture centers in this region. The questionnaire was then issued and handed to those qualified for the survey. The exclusion criterion from the survey was having remarriage/divorce history, drug abuse or being under psychosomatic treatments.

Spanier Marital adjustment questionnaire, Young's schema short form (third edition), differentiation of self inventory were the tools applied for this research. In order to analyze the data, correlation test, regression analysis and T-test were used.

Results:

 The findings of the study showed that there is a significant but inverse relationship between all early maladaptive schemas with marital adjustment (p<0.05), and among five principal areas, abandonment and instability (r= -0.72) and overvigilance (r=-0.61) showed the highest correlation with marital adjustment (p<0.001). From among early maladaptive schemas, shame and defect schemas had the highest (inverse) correlation with marital adjustment (r=- 0.72, p< 0.001).

In this research, the variable of differentiation of self was correlated with marital adjustment (r=0.54, p<0.001) and from among aspects of differentiation, aspect of "my status" showed a direct relationship with marital adjustment (r=0.39, p<0.001). Three elements of emotional reactionability (r=-0.45) emotional comingling (r= - 0.42) and emotional escape (r= -0.31) indicate the individual's differentiation which was proved to have a significant and negative relationship with marital adjustment in this study. From these elements, emotional reactionability showed the highest relevance with marital adjustment, a state in which the individual's feelings and emotions overcome his/her reason and wisdom and causes such persons to make decisions, in tense situations, simply based on emotional reactions.

In this research another relationship was also found between early maladaptive schemas and differentiation (p<0.001).  From among aspects of differentiation, aspect of "my status" was proved to have the highest correlation with the schema of mistrust (r=-0.45, p<0.001). Early maladaptive schemas and differentiation of self showed a high potentiality for the prediction of marital adjustment as the findings indicated that early maladaptive schemas and differentiation of self can predict up to 73 % marital adjustment.

Conclusion:

This research was carried out to find out the relationship between early maladaptive schemas and differentiation of self in The Married with marital adjustment. The findings of the research indicate and prove the relationship between these two variables and marital adjustment. The findings showed that formation of early maladaptive schemas during childhood and its consequent personal and behavioral structure in adulthood, affect the individual's adjustment in marital life. In this regard, schemas of shame and defect were proved to have the highest predictability potential for marital maladjustments.  The inverse relation of three aspects of differentiation of self (except for "my status" aspect), with marital adjustment could mean that people with intimate and border free relations mingled with family members are more likely  to  fail in regulating and controlling  their communicational and even emotional borders which consequently results in experiencing maladjustments in relations with their partner. Thus, early maladaptive schemas and differentiation of self can be applied in the prediction of marital adjustment.

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Abstract
Background & Objectives: The physical and psychological changes occurring during puberty are regarded as fundamental developmental crises. Since adolescents experience various events while socializing with their peers, friends, school, and home, they may feel countless emotions, including anxiety. Fulfilling the emotional and physical needs of the children in the family and through sufficient manifestations of the children's attachment leads to the formation of adaptive schemas about themselves and others. The family environment nurtures the differentiation of individuals during this developmental period, later affecting all aspects of their lives. In this context, the schemas and lack of differentiation prevent the development of emotional regulation abilities. In this situation, a teenager may experience much anxiety. The current research aims to predict adolescent girls' anxiety studying at the first secondary level based on the primary maladaptive schemas and self–differentiation components.
Methods: The cross–sectional research has a descriptive–analytical correlational type. The statistical population included all adolescent girls studying in the first level of secondary school in Fardis City, Alborz Province, Iran, in the first semester of the 2019–2020 academic year. A total of 300 students were selected by convenience sampling method. The inclusion criteria were as follows: living with their mothers since childhood, staying in Fardis City, having a mother's education higher than a diploma, lacking physical disabilities or chronic diseases, not taking medicine due to one's physical and mental condition, not being hospitalized during the last year due to physical and mental illness, not receiving psychotherapy at the same time and during the previous year, and having GPA (Grade Point Average) greater than 16 in the academic record in the last two semesters. The exclusion criterion was incomplete answers to the questionnaires. The study tools included the Beck Anxiety Inventory (Beck et al., 1988), Differentiation of Self Inventory (Skowron & Schmitt, 2003), and Young Schema Questionnaire (Young & Brown, 1994). The Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple linear regression method were used for data analysis using SPSS version 24 at a significance level of 0.05.
Results: The results showed that the disconnection and rejection maladaptive schemas (p<0.001, β=0.225) and components of emotional reactivity (p<0.001, β=0.308), including I–position (p<0.001, β=0.144), and emotional cut–off (p=0.045, β=0.102) predicted anxiety in adolescent girls. Also, 88% of the variance of adolescent girls' anxiety was explained by initial maladaptive schemas and self–differentiation components.
Conclusion: According to the findings, adolescent girls' anxiety is predicted by the disconnection and rejection of early maladaptive schemas and the components of self–differentiation: emotional reactivity, I–position, and emotional cut–off.