Comparison of the effectiveness of narrative therapy and Good Enough Sex Model on the cognitive, behavioral and emotional attitudes toward sex among infertile persons

Narrative therapy (NT) and Good Enough Sex Model (GESM) are models for promoting mental and sexual health in marital identity. The present study examines and compares the effectiveness of these two treatments on the dimensions of sexual attitudes in infertile couples.

Participants were 48 married individuals who referred to the urology, gynecology and sexual health clinics in Tehran with infertility, which was selected thorugh convenience sampling method and were randomly assigned into three groups of 16 individuals such as NT, GESM and Control groups. The content of NT and GESM was performed separately for the experimental groups during 4 sessions of 90 minutes. To collect data, the demographic and Dehghani'  sexual attitude questionnaires, was used.  Data analysis was performed using SPSS software 26 and descriptive statistics tests and analysis of univariate and multivariate covariance, Bonferroni and mixed analysis of variance.

The result of covariance test was significant for all three emotional, cognitive and behavioral variables at 99% confidence level (p<0.01) and both treatments had a significant effect on improving the cognitive and emotional dimensions of infertile married sexual attitude in the post-test phase (p˂0.05) and only NT were effective in the behavioral dimension of sexual attitude (p˂0.05) but GESM not make a significant difference in the behavioral dimension (P>0.05). Also NT has been more successful in promoting the emotional dimension of sexual attitude and in the cognitive dimension, both interventions have acted similarly.

Both treatments can be used to enhance the emotional and cognitive dimensions of the sexual attitude in infertile couples.