The effectiveness of marital enrichment program on increasing the intimacy and hope of couples with disabled children

The present study aims to investigate the effectiveness of marital relation enrichment program on increasing the intimacy and hope of couples with disabled children. The research method was a quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test with control group. The study population was couples referring to having disabled children to a Rehabilitation Center located in Tehran. Among them, 30 couples with lower grades in the marital intimacy and hopefulness experiments were selected through targeted sampling and The case group was assigned in two groups (15 couples) and control (15 couples). The research instrument was marital infertility questionnaire (OLAI, 2006) and Snyder's Hope Questionnaire (ADHS), which was completed by two groups in both pre-test and post-test. The training sessions of the enrichment communication program for couples in the experimental group were conducted in 7 sessions of 90 minutes, but not for the control group participants. The data were then analyzed through covariance analysis. The results of the analysis showed that there was a significant difference between marital hope and intimacy (except for physical and psychological intimacy) in the experimental and control groups. In other words, the training of marital enrichment program could be an effective way to increase hope and Intimate couples have children with disabilities.