Students’ Smoking Abstinence Self-efficacy toward Early Maladaptive Schemas

Introduction: Smoking abstinence self-efficacy is a factor that plays a key role in preventing addiction or its revival tendency after quitting. This study attempted to analyze the relationship between the early maladaptive schemas and smoking abstinence self-efficacy among the sophomore high school students in the city of Gorgan, Iran. Methods: This was a descriptive study and its population (n= 9955) included all second grade high school students in the city of Gorgan in the school year 2015- 2016. The multi- stage cluster sampling method was used to select 369 participants. The required data were collected using the maladaptive schema questioners and the smoking abstinence self-efficacy questionnaire. Pearson correlation and Multi- variable regression methods were also used to analyze data. Results: The results of the current study indicated a significant, yet reverse relationship of the early maladaptive schemas with smoking abstinence selfefficacy. Furthermore, 51 percent change in self-efficacy variance is derived from the components of early maladaptive schemas. Among components of the early maladaptive schemas, components of the abandonment / alienation, the strongest predictor was students smoking abstinence self-efficacy. Conclusion: Early self- efficacy schemas are among the individual and psychological causes with especial importance in studies on smoking dependency and its consumption. Such early schemas lead to biases in an individual’s interpretation of the events. These biases are represented as distorted attitudes, false speculations, unrealistic aims and perspectives, and high- risk behaviors such as smoking.