Effects of Cognitive-Behavioral Couple Therapy on Dysfunctional Attitudes and Marital Adjustment in Married Students

Marriage is established with the hope of belonging, being protected, and having security. Therefore, marital adjustment and its dimensions are discussed in family and marital studies. Another contributing factor to the success or failure of marriage is individuals’ viewpoints concerning the marriage process and choosing a spouse. Dysfunctional attitudes are cognitive attributes that address the vulnerability, persistence, and recurrence of family differences. A psychotherapy method that has been recently widely used is cognitive–behavioral therapy. This treatment is a combination of cognitive and behavioral therapies that have long been used to treat psychological disorders. Accordingly, the present study aimed to investigate the effects of Cognitive–Behavioral Couple Therapy (CBCT) on dysfunctional attitudes and marital adjustment in married students.

This was a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest and a control group design. The statistical population of the study consisted of married students referring to counseling centers in Kerman City, Iran, in 2019 (N=120 in the 2–month research course). Using the purposive sampling approach, 30 couples (60 individuals) were selected; after matching, they were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. The inclusion criteria of the research were the age range of 20–50 years, studying at the university, and the presence of both spouses in all stages of the research. The exclusion criteria of the study included receiving medical and psychological therapies in the past 6 months, substance or alcohol abuse, presenting a personality and psychological disorders, and simultaneously receiving counseling and psychotherapy interventions. Meeting the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the study was approved by the technical officials of the counseling centers. Initially, 30 student couples were selected based on the lowest scores obtained on the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier, 1976) and the highest scores achieved on the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale (Weissman & Beck, 1978). The experimental group received 12 CBCT sessions according to the package of Khanjani Veshki et al. (2017); however, the controls received no intervention. The study measurement tools were administered in the study groups after providing the intervention. The obtained data were analyzed using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) in SPSS at the significance level of 0.05.

The current research results suggested that CBCT reduced dysfunctional attitudes (p<0.001) and increased marital adjustment and its components, including bipartite agreement, the expression of love, and marital satisfaction in the study participants (p<0.001).

According to the collected results, CBCT was effective in reducing dysfunctional attitudes and increasing marital adjustment (bipartite agreement, the expression of love, & marital satisfaction) among the explored married couples. Thus, this treatment method can be used as an effective technique for couples seeking divorce and couples whose intimacy and marital satisfaction have decreased.