The effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on dyadic adjustment in women

The quality of marriage depends upon the adjustment among couples, in which by managing the content of thoughts and emotions and also raising the awareness and commitment the marital satisfaction would increase. Along the same line, the present study aimed to determine effectiveness of acceptance and commitment focused therapy on marital adjustment in married women. The method of this research was a semi trial study, with pre-test, post-test design, and a follow up re-test in 5 months and the study population consisted of married females who attended to Dabestan & Majidieh community center located at district 7 of Tehran city from April to May of 2017. Based on calling –up the volunteers in the community and after completing the questioners followed by a preliminary interview, 30 married women with marital maladjustment problem were recruited, using convenience sampling method and then they were randomly allocated into two equal groups of 15 people in each. The research instrument was Dyadic Adjustment Scale, a 32 items self-reported tool developed by Spanier. The outcome of the covariance matrix showed that the acceptance and commitment focused therapy had statically significant effect on marital adjustment (P<0/05 & F=32), and its sub-scale scores as; dyadic satisfaction (P<0/05 & F=14/2), dyadic cohesion (P<0/05 & F=32/2), dyadic consensus (P<0/05 & F=6/1), and affection expression )P<0/05 & F=18/9). This effect remained sustained within the follow up assessment in 5 months’ time) P<0/05 & F=10/9). The finding indicates that acceptance and commitment therapy approach can help married women with marital maladjustment to learn effective strategies for managing their negative feelings and emotions and committing themselves to act upon it, increasing their flexibility and marital adjustment.