Iranian Journal of War and Public Health

Aims: Children’s mental conditions are influenced by their communication with their parents. The purpose of this study was to explain the causal relationship between early maladaptive schemas and psychological capital in the children of veterans, with a focus on the mediating role of cognitive emotion regulation.
Instrument & Methods: This descriptive study employed a causal modeling statistical approach for data collection. Out of 86,642 children (boys and girls) of veterans aged 18 to 35, 340 participants were available and voluntarily surveyed from April 2022 to September 2022. The research tools included the Young Schema Questionnaire-Short Form, the Psychological Capital Questionnaire by Luthans et al., and the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire by Garnefski et al. Data were analyzed using path analysis, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and regression analysis by AMOS 24.
Findings: The evaluated structural model had good fit indices for the data. The path coefficient for adaptive strategies of cognitive emotion regulation with psychological capital was positive (p=0.001; β=0.247), while the path coefficient for maladaptive strategies of cognitive emotion regulation with psychological capital was negative and significant (p=0.001; β=0.338). The total path coefficient (the sum of direct and indirect path coefficients) between early maladaptive schemas and psychological capital was negative and significant (p=0.001; β=0.209).
Conclusion: Both adaptive and maladaptive strategies of cognitive emotion regulation explain the relationship between early maladaptive schemas and psychological capital in the children of veterans.