Comparison of the Effectiveness of Narrative Therapy and Emotionally Focused Therapy on Family Cohesion of Veterans' Wives; A Case Study of Khorramabad City

Despite passing of years since the end of the war, veterans are still experiencing a lot of physical and psychological problems, which can seriously affect well-being of their wives and, consequently, family function. The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of narrative therapy and emotionally focused therapy on family cohesion of veterans' wives in Khorramabad. The present semi-experimental research was carried out in 2017 with two experimental and one control groups and a three-month follow-up in the community of veterans' wives in Khorramabad, in which 60 subjects were selected by purposive sampling method and randomly divided into two experimental and one control groups (each group included 20 subjects). The first experimental group received 10 narrative therapy sessions (120 minutes for each session) and the second group received 10 emotionally focused therapy (120 minutes for each session) and the control group was placed in waiting list. The Samani family cohesion questionnaire was used as a research tool. The data were analyzed by SPSS 20 software, using repeated measures ANOVA and Bonferroni post hoc test. Findings: In the post-test and follow-up phase, there was a significant difference in family cohesion scores between narrative therapy and emotionally focused therapy groups in comparison with the control group (p<0.01), and both treatments had the same efficacy (p>0.05). Narrative therapy and emotionally focused therapy are effective in improving family cohesion in veterans’ wives.