The effectiveness of adapted schema therapy for cluster C personality disorders in older adults – integrating positive schemas

Introduction: Schema therapy (ST) is an efficacious psychotherapy for personality disorders (PDs) in adults. The first empirical support for the effectiveness of ST in older adults with cluster C PDs was provided recently. ST partly focusses on the positive, but there is an increasing awareness of imbalance in the ST community because of the emphasis on negative schemas versus attention to positive schemas. Positive schemas may be important vehicles of therapeutic change in psychotherapy with older people, as it may help strengthen the healthy adult mode, and it might also help change a negative life review. Suggestions were made to increase the efficacy and feasibility of ST in older adults, including adjusting the case conceptualisation, modifying the experiential techniques, making use of the patient's wisdom and reactivating positive schemas. The aim of the current study is to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of adapted individual ST for older adults. Methods/design: A multiple baseline design is used with positive and negative core beliefs as primary outcome measures. Ten older adults (age > 60 years) with cluster C PDs are treated with schema therapy, with weekly sessions during one year. This treatment phase is preceded by a baseline phase varying randomly from 4 to 8 weeks. After treatment, there is a 6-month follow-up phase with monthly booster sessions. Symptomatic distress, schema modes, early maladaptive schemas (EMS) and early adaptive schemas (EAS) are secondary outcome measures. PD will be diagnosed before baseline and after treatment phase. EAS are assessed with the Dutch version of the Young Positive Schema Questionnaire (YPSQ). Discussion: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical study in which positive schemas are integrated in ST treatment to examine the efficacy of an adapted form of ST for older adults. This is in line with wider developments supporting the integration of positive schema's into ST. It offers the possibility to improve the effectiveness of ST in older adults. Trial registration: The Netherlands National Trial Register NL8346, registered 1 February 2020

Beta Samati: discovery and excavation of an Aksumite town

The Empire of Aksum was one of Africa's most influential ancient civilisations. Traditionally, most archaeological fieldwork has focused on the capital city of Aksum, but recent research at the site of Beta Samati has investigated a contemporaneous trade and religious centre located between Aksum and the Red Sea. The authors outline the discovery of the site and present important finds from the initial excavations, including an early basilica, inscriptions and a gold intaglio ring. From daily life and ritual praxis to international trade, this work illuminates the role of Beta Samati as an administrative centre and its significance within the wider Aksumite world

Perception of discourse boundaries and prominence in spontaneous Dutch speech

This paper describes the results of a perception experiment in which subjects listening to a retold story in Dutch were asked to mark various perceived discourse structures and to give their judgements on prominence in the verbatim transcription of that story. They marked discourse boundaries by means of conventional punctuation, indicating perceived non-final, sentence final, and paragraph final boundaries. Previously, the written versions had been analyzed for discourse structure on independent, non-prosodic grounds by experts in discourse analysis. This was done at a global level (phrasing) as well as at a local level (focal structure). The aim of the experiment was to see in what way the perceived structure of a discourse, in terms of boundaries and prominence, coincides with the one predicted by the objectively determined discourse structure