Effectiveness of rational emotive couple's therapy in reducing irrational beliefs in couples seeking divorce

Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the effect of rational emotive couple's therapy on the reduction of irrational beliefs in couples who were seeking divorce.
This was a quasi-experimental study with control group, pretest, posttest and a two-month follow up. The research population consisted of couples seeking divorce, who were referred to the family court of Karaj city from April to August 2014 (N=250 couples). Of these, 20 couples were selected to participate in the study. Selection was based on a diagnostic interview and couple's voluntary agreement to participate in the study. Participants were then allocated to either an experimental or a control group and completed Jone's (1968) Irrational Beliefs Test (IBT). The experimental group received 10 weekly sessions of rational emotive therapy based intervention. Each session lasted for 60 minutes. The control group did not receive any intervention. Data were analyzed using covariance.
The results showed that generally, the intervention group had lower scores on the IBT. However, intervention was not effective as far as "frustration reaction to failure" was concerned.
Rational emotive based intervention can be applied as an effective method to reduce irrational beliefs of couples seeking divorce. Also it may be useful in other aspects of inter personal relationship.