EFFECTIVENESS OF DIALECTICAL BEHAVIOUR AND SCHEMA-FOCUSED THERAPIES IN MANAGING DEPRESSIVE DISORDERS IN IN-SCHOOL ADOLESCENTS IN BENIN METROPOLIS

ABSTRACT

The study investigated the effectiveness of Dialectical Behaviour and Schema-Focused Therapies in managing depressive disorders in in-school adolescents in Benin Metropolis. The purpose was to examine how the two therapies could be used to manage depressive disorders in in-school adolescents and to determine which of the therapies was more effective. To achieve this, seven (7) research questions were raised, hypothesised and tested at 0.05 alpha level of significance. The quasi-experimental research design was adopted for the study using the pretestposttest, non-equivalent control group. The target population for this study consisted 14,473 senior secondary school students in the public secondary schools in Benin Metropolis. Three schools were randomly selected from three Local Government Areas in Benin Metropolis which constituted the three groups (two experimental and one control) used for the study. Groups 1 and 2 were randomly assigned as the experimental groups while Group 3, was the control group. The Adolescent Depressive Disorder Questionnaire (ADDQ) and the Peer Relationship Scale (PRS) served as instruments for the study with reliability co-efficient values of 0.931 and 0.839 respectively. Seventy-six (76) adolescents met the benchmark for those with depressive disorder. They comprised 29 adolescents for group 1, 18 adolescents for group 2 and 29 adolescents for the group 3. The treatment lasted for six (6) weeks with two sessions per week at 45 minutes per session. The data obtained from the pre-tests and post-tests of the adolescents were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at 0.05 alpha level of significance.