Comparing the Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral and Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy on Perceived Stress and Marital Satisfaction among Primiparous Pregnant Women

Pregnancy causes several physical and psychological changes. Therefore, pregnant women may face with numerous issues and problems including stress and marital dissatisfaction. This study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of two cognitive-behavioral and emotion-oriented couple therapy training methods on perceived stress and marital satisfaction in primiparous women.

In a semi-experimental design using a pre-test and post-test with the control group plan, 60 pregnant women were chosen by considering the inclusion criteria, and then they randomly divided into three 20-subject groups (two experimental groups and one control group). The Experimental groups were trained on cognitive-behavioral and emotionally focused in 8 sessions of 90 minutes, while the control group did not receive any training during this time. The tools which are used to collect data were the Perceived Stress Scale of Cohen and Enrich Marital Satisfaction questionnaire. Data were analyzed by using mean, multivariate analysis of covariance in SPSS software version 23 at a significance level of 0.05.

Findings showed that both cognitive-behavioral and emotionally focused approaches are practical on perceived stress, marital satisfaction (and its subscales) (p<0.05). Cognitive-behavioral couple therapy (17.6±2.99) was more effective than emotionally focused therapy (24.8±4.74) on perceived stress (p<0.05). On the other hand, emotionally focused couple therapy (158.7±6.64) was more effective than cognitive-behavioral therapy (144.9±4.9) on marital satisfaction and some of its components including personality issues and marital relationship.

Due to the greater effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral couple therapy on perceived stress and also the greater effectiveness of emotionally focused couple therapy on marital satisfaction, they reduce stress and improve marital satisfaction and then can be used as effective methods during pregnancy