Introduction

 Both adolescents and parents have considered adolescence more difficult compared with childhood. Aristotle declared in 300 years BC that adolescents are passionate and enthusiastic and ready to be dominated by instincts [1-3]. Adolescence continues about 8 years and covers not only the changes related to pubertal periods in the body but also the growth and development of mental talents, desires, trends, personal relationships, emotional growth, employment, and educational relationships and abilities, and religious and ethical growth and development [4-6]. Obtaining identity is one of the characters of personal and social growth during adolescence and it can be stated that finding a practical answer to the question Who am I? is one of the main tasks of adolescents in society. But adolescent has the most significant growth task to obtain an independent identity and adapt him/herself for starting adulthood. Presently, suppose he/she cannot obtain the identity properly in this period. In that case, the adolescent will be misled about the role and will encounter problems such as low self-esteem, low independence, difficulty in decision making, feeling lonely and empty, helplessness, failure, etc. [7-9]. Identity has been acquired from the Latin word (iden), indicating the same and includes his/her continuous individuality and compliance and uniformity over time and following different conditions [10]. According to Marcia (1980), the internal organization's identity is spontaneous and dynamic, which results from the individual's drive, abilities, beliefs, and past experiences. Identity is the distinction and difference that a person makes between him/herself and others; identity is a psychological structure [11].

Identity crisis is recognized as a conflict of adolescent social role in a process that he/she can perceive and express. Identity crisis has no sense of personal similarity and time association when it causes an inability to perform the role that the person considers society expects of him/her to perform [12-15]. Many adolescents experience feelings of absurdity, alienation, loneliness when they encounter an identity crisis. Stopping education or the inability to choose a job is frequently a sign of an identity crisis or confusion concerning social roles. Some psychologists believe, whenever one has insecurities and doubts in finding him/herself, he/she encounters a crisis, confusion, aimlessness, and a kind of hopelessness and depression, and at the same time, he/she suffers from a negative self-image, which is recognized as an identity crisis. The power concerning forming the identity also depends on cognitive development because the person is labeled, and others recognize him/her by that label. Identity crisis generates 4 types of problems, which are:

1-      The time and carelessness disorder in affairs that the adolescent assumes that time has no importance, and he/she has too much time for anything;

2-      Ggreat feeling towards him/herself that the adolescent's mind is always involved with physical, occupational, or role features;

3-      Forming a negative identity that the adolescent ridicules of family, social, educational values ​​, and everything is presented to him/her by such channels in the form of biological and educational instructions;

4-         Problems that drive social perception to stagnation and pause Various studies have recognized that identity and its crisis is related to mental health and personality, individuals' behavior, beliefs, and attitudes, income, age and gender, communication skills and migration, religion and social support, emotional abuse and damaging experiences, and schema [12-14].

 Adler (1929) used early maladaptive schemas for the first time. He believed that psychopathology reflected unhealthy and neurosis schemas, which are considered a base of lifestyle. Schemas are ordinarily defined as structures, templates, or frameworks [15-17]. The schema represents the distinctive features of an event in an abstract form, in other words; the outline of the prominent elements of an event is described Schema. Early maladaptive schemas are self-damaging emotional and cognitive patterns that have been formed at the beginning of development in mind and are repeated during life. Schemas are created because of non-satisfying the fundamental emotional needs, which include:

1-      Secure attachment to others;

2-      Self-rule, adequacy, and identity;

3-      Freedom in expressing healthy needs and emotions

4-      Spontaneity and fun

5-      Realistic limitations and self-control. Consequently, schemas can be consistent or inconsistent/maladaptive, positive or negative, and can also be established in the early periods of life or next course

Early maladaptive schemas include

1-      cracking - instability

2-      emotional deprivation

3-      distrust - to be hurt

4-      inability- shame

5-      social isolation - alienation

6-      dependence - inadequacy

7-      vulnerability to injury or illness

8-      Confusion- undeveloped

9-      failure

10-  deserving - nobility

11-  inadequate self-discipline

12-  sacrifice

13-  self-sacrifice

14-   seeking to be confirmed and accepted

15-  Optimism- pessimism

16-  emotional inhibition

17-  unfair standards - extreme reproach

18-  punishment. Horowits (1997) used the personal schemas instead of early maladaptive schemas and considered it as an unconscious pattern of person's perspective about oneself and others formed from the remaining memories of childhood experiences.

It is possible to say, according to the stages of Erikson's psychosocial growth, that the successful solution of each stage starts a consistent schema, while failure in that stage creates a maladaptive schema [18-20]. Some authors also believe that there is also a consistent schema for each early maladaptive schema. Bad behavior in childhood causes a cognitive vulnerability in adolescence and dysfunctional schemas [21-24]. Studies show early maladaptive schemas are significantly related with many disorders such as personality disorders, eating disorders, and perfectionism [5] depression and anxiety repetitive thoughts, emotional disorder, and suicide psychosis and mental illness social isolation and trust, abnormal dimensions of personality and bipolar disorder, drug use, alcoholism disorder and eating disorder [25].

As mentioned, maladaptive schemas that are provided during life greatly affect the whole life and cause many disorders. Also, one of the problems of adolescence is to create an independent and efficient identity. All injuries related to childhood, interpersonal relationships, etc., can affect identity formation. No research has been conducted to investigate the relationship between the identity crisis and maladaptive schemas due to the degree of identity and maladaptive schemas, and there is a research gap in this field. Conducting such research can be a starting point to reduce maladaptive schemas that result in the identity crisis and vice versa [26].

Research Methodology

This study is descriptive research, and the method applied in the study is correlational. The research population included all boys and girls who are studying in high school in Sirjan. The research sample comprised 150 people (75 girls and 75 boys), and a multi-stage sampling method was used to choose them among high school students.

Instruments

Ahmadvand Identity Crisis Questionnaire: This questionnaire covers 30 items. Various diagnostic dimensions of the crisis have been categorized to organize this questionnaire as follows:

1-      Problems in long-term objectives.

2-      Doubt in choosing a job

3-      No proper model for friendship

4-      Improper sexual behavior

5-      difficulties and problems in religious cognition and knowledge

6-      No attention to ethical values

7-      Non-observing group commitment

8-       Having a negative view of yourself

9-      No effort and initiative spirit

10-  Disruption of timing. In the research conducted by Bouali Dad and Kamani (2001), the calculated Cronbach's alpha was 0 equal to a coefficient of 89%. Furthermore, this questionnaire's credit coefficient was 95% in the method of halving, which indicated a very satisfactory credit coefficient.

Young's Schema Questionnaire (SQ-SF): This questionnaire was created to assess EMS for a shorter time. SQ-SE holds 75 items from the main version containing 205 items. The first comprehensive research was conducted on the psychometric features of the Young's Schema Questionnaire by Smith, Jones, Young, and Telch (1995), and the results showed that it was reported for each initial maladaptive schema from 83% to 96%. Also, the test-retest coefficient in the non-clinical population was achieved between 50% to 82%. Abbasian and Fathizadeh (2003) translated and standardized this questionnaire, and about 94% of internal consistency was reported for it. Moreover, this questionnaire's convergent validity with the unreasonable belief’s questionnaire was reported by 36%, and 12 specific experts confirmed its face validity. Furthermore, Ahi (2005) conducted the norm of this questionnaire in Iran on 387 students of Tehran universities, including 252 females and 135 males. They were randomly selected using a multi-stages method from Allameh Tabatabai University, Azad University, and Science and research. This questionnaire's internal consistency was obtained by 97% using Cronbach's alpha for females and 98% for males.

Data analysis

In this study, the Pearson correlation method was used in order to analyze the data and investigate the relationship between identity crisis and the dimensions of maladaptive schemas, and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to determine the differences between these variables in girls and boys.

Table 1. indicates the mean, standard deviation, age, identity crisis, and female and male students' maladaptive schemas.

 Table 2 indicates the correlation between identity crisis and maladaptive schemas and the dimensions of maladaptive schemas in the considered sample.

Table 2. Correlation between identity crisis and maladaptive schemas and dimensions of maladaptive schemas

 Table 2 shows that there is a positive correlation between identity crisis and early maladaptive schemas (r = 0.45, p = 0.001), indicating that maladaptive schemas are increased by increasing the identity crisis and vice versa. There is also a significant positive relationship between identity crisis and emotional deprivation, abandonment, distrust, defect, failure, dependence, vulnerability, confusion, obedience, inhibition, merit, and self-control at the mentioned levels. This means that the mentioned variables are also changed in the same direction by increasing and decreasing the identity crisis, and vice versa. But no significant relationship was observed between identity crisis and self-sacrifice (P = 0.8).

 As the test results show, there is no significant difference between the two groups in terms of research variables. (P>0.05).

Table 4. Results of one-way analysis of variance in Manova text on the scores of identity crisis and maladaptive schemas of female and male students

 According to the mentioned significant levels (P > 0.05), no significant difference was observed between male and female students regarding identity crisis and maladaptive schemas.