The efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) on marital satisfaction in couples

Background & objectives: Marriage is the start point in the family formation and it has been approved as the highest social practice to achieve emotional and security needs for adults. Although satisfactory marriage is an important factor in mental health but poor and unsatisfactory marriages can lead to unhappy couples which has negative and irreversible effects on both wives and husbands. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of the treatment based on Acceptance and Commitment (ACT) on marital satisfaction among couples who were married.

Methods: A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest study design was used to conduct this study. The population consisted of all students of Islamic Azad University of Bandar Abbas who were married, during 2015 and 2016. Based on acceptance and commitment therapy protocol a 12-session intervention was conducted over a period of 3 months. Enrich marital satisfaction assessment questionnaire was used to collect data. The subjects responded to questionnaires before intervention and 1 month after intervention. Descriptive statistics and ANOVA using were used for data analysis in SPSS V.20.

Results: The results of the analysis showed that the average post-test scores of between two groups in the components of marital satisfaction including sexual satisfaction (experimental, 24.45; control, 19.83), communications (experimental, 22.10; control, 19.81), solving conflict (experimental, 20.35; control, 17.15) and idealistic distortion (experimental, 16.65; control, 14.55) which the difference was statistically significant (p<0.05).

Conclusion: Based on the positive effect of acceptance and commitment therapy on marital satisfaction of the couples, this method is recommended to be used alongside other interventions for improving marital satisfaction of couples.

Full text: https://hcjournal.arums.ac.ir/article-1-706-en.html