The Effectiveness of Group Couple Therapy based on Self-Regulated on Emotional Abuse and Martial Distress

Due to the devastating effects of emotional abuse in couple's relationship that also leads to the marital distress, the present study has been carried out with the purpose of the effectiveness of self-regulated couple therapy approach on emotional abuse and martial distress. It was a semi-experimental study with pre test- post test along with the Control group. The statistical society of this study, includes the whole couples referring to the counseling and psychotherapy center dependent on the welfare and education of Mashhad, which 10 couples have been selected as the sample of study by available sampling method and they have been placed in two groups of Control (5 couples) and experimental (5 couples). After implementation of the emotional abuse questionnaire and duo adjustment scale (DAS) as a pre test on both groups, the experimental group was exposed to the 8 sessions of self-regulated couple therapy. After intervention completion, both experimental and Control group had been answered the post test. Obtained data has been analyzed by descriptive statistical indexes, single-variable and multivariable covariance analysis test. Results suggest that between two groups of Experimental and Control groups, there is a significant difference in emotional abuse and martial adjustment variables (p=0.001, p<0.01). So it can be concluded that self-regulated couple therapy leads to reduce the emotional abuse among couples and also this approach significantly reduces the martial distress among couples.