Age neutrality of the young schema questionnaire in patients with a substance use disorder.

ABSTRACT Background: Young’s Schema Focused Therapy (SFT) is gaining popularity in the treatment of older adults.In the context of this therapy, the Young Schema Questionnaire (YSQ) was developed to assess the earlymaladaptive schemas (EMS). EMS are considered to be relatively stable over time, but research shows thatquestionnaires often lack face validity in older adults, which makes it difficult to investigate EMS in olderadults and their stability across the lifespan. Methods: In the present cross-sectional study, we investigated the age neutrality of the Young SchemaQuestionnaire – Long Form in young (aged 18–34 years), middle-aged (aged 35–59 years), and older(aged 60–75 years) adults in a clinical sample of substance use disorders ( N = 321) by examining potentialdifferentialitemfunctioning(DIF).Whileinvestigatingthestabilityoftheschemas,wecontrolledforsubstancedependency and clinical symptoms by means of, respectively, the Drug Use Screening Inventory – Revisedand the Symptom Checklist-90-R.