Effectiveness of Emotion-Focused Therapy in Reduction of Marital Violence and Improvement of Family Functioning: A Quasi-Experimental Study

The rise in marital violence has led to growing concern about people with this condition. Emotion-focused Therapy (EFT) is one of the well-established treatments that consider both family interaction and emotion in the creation of secure attachment.

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of EFT in marital violence reduction and family functioning improvement.

This study was conducted in 2018-2019 among married women with family problems referring to counseling centers in Tehran, Iran. We randomly allocated 32 women with a mean marriage age of 24.27 ± 6.18 years to EFT and control groups. Marital violence and family functioning were measured before and after EFT using a domestic violence questionnaire and the family assessment device scale constructed based on the McMaster Model of Family Functioning (MMFF). Emotion-focused group therapy was conducted in the intervention group for eight 90-min sessions. The control group was exposed to no intervention. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was utilized to evaluate the distribution of variables. We used the independent t-test, chi-square test, Friedman test, Mann-Whitney test, ANOVA, ANCOVA, and MANCOVA for data analysis.

Marital violence decreased significantly after the intervention (-11.25 vs. -1.62, P < 0.001). Moreover, family functioning improved after the intervention (6.25 vs. -1.69, P = 0.001) in the EFT group compared to the control group.

The EFT was an effective intervention in this study. The findings implicate the significance of essential interventions for marital violence reduction and family functioning improvement.