Comparing the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy and bupropion drugtherapy in sexual relationship anxiety and marital conflicts of couples

The present study aimed to compare the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy and bupropion drugtherapy in sexual relationship anxiety and marital conflicts of couples.

This study was a three-group pretest-posttest semi-experimental research design. The research statistical population consisted of all individuals with sexual anxiety complaints who referred to midwifery clinics and psychiatric centers in Neyshabour in the spring of 2017. Of this population, 39 subjects were chosen through convenience sampling method and were randomly assigned into three research groups (cognitive-behavioral therapy, drugtherapy and control group) while considering the research inclusion and exclusion criteria. Then, the first group underwent 8 sessions of cognitive-behavioral therapy and the second group received drugtherapy. During this period, the control group did not receive any psychological or pharmacological intervention. At the beginning and end of the study, all three groups were evaluated by the research questionnaires including Marital Conflict Scale and Sexual Anxiety Scale. In order to compare the results of the experimental and control groups, multivariate analysis of variance (covariance) and Bonferroni post-hoc test were employed in SPSS software.

The results demonstrated that cognitive-behavioral therapy was significantly more effective than pharmacotherapy in improving sexual relationship anxiety and marital conflicts.

It is suggested that cognitive-behavioral therapy be used as an evidence-based therapy to reduce the problems of people with sexual relationship anxiety.