Effectiveness of emotionally focused couple therapy on marital conflicts and tendency to divorce in Couples Referred to Counseling Centers in Bandar Abbas County

Introduction: This study aims at analyzing the effectiveness of emotionally focused couple therapy on marital conflicts and tendency to get divorce in couples who have referred to counseling centers in Bandar Abbas County. Correspondence: Fatemeh Solymani Ahmadi, MSc. Department of Family Counseling, Hormozgan University. Bandar Abbas, Iran Tel:+98 9164353509 Email: [email protected] Methods: This study was carried out as a quasi-experimental design with control group, pretest and posttest measures. The statistical population of this study included all couples who have referred to counseling centers in Bandar Abbas City, private counseling centers, center for intervention in family crises and center for reducing divorce rate in order to solve their marital problems in late 2011 and early 2012. The sample had 30 couples who have been selected using available sampling method and divided into control and experimental groups using simple casual sampling method. Marital Conflict Questionnaire (MCQ), designed by Barati and Sanaie Dhakir (1996) with 42 questions and Marital Instability Index Questionnaire were used in this study. For measuring the marital instability, couples in the experimental group received nine 90-minute couple therapy sessions once a week, whereas the control group did not receive any intervention. The descriptive statistical methods including frequency, mean value and SD as well as inferential statistical methods including analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were used to analyze data. The results were analyzed suing SPSS 16. Results: The results indicated that the average scores of marital conflict and marital instability in posttest of experimental group was significantly less than those in control group and there was a significant difference between experimental and control groups (P<0.0001). Conclusion: Therefore, the study's hypothesis, the effectiveness of emotionally focused couple therapy on alleviation of marital conflicts and tendency to divorce in couples was confirmed (general conclusion).