Validation and Effectiveness of Women’s Psychological Empowerment Package on Resilience and Mental Health of Women with Veteran Husbands

Veterans' inabilities create problems for spouses and negatively affect their physical and mental health.

This study aimed to determine the validation and effectiveness of women's psychological empowerment package on resilience and mental health of women with veteran husbands.

The research method was a quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test with a control group. The statistical population of the present study included all the wives of veterans under the auspices of the Martyr and Veterans Affairs Foundation of Lordegan, Iran, in 2021. Sample members were randomly divided into experimental and control groups; thus, 15 were people in each group. Data collection tools included Connor-Davidson's (2003) Resilience Questionnaire and Goldberg and Hillier's (1979) Mental Health Questionnaire. The psychological empowerment program was implemented in 12 sessions of 90 min over six weeks (two sessions per week). Multivariate analysis of covariance, repeated measures analysis of variance, and post hoc tests were used to analyze the collected data.

The results showed that women's psychological empowerment program significantly improves the resilience and mental health of women with a veteran spouse (P<0.05). In addition, the results of repeated measures analysis of variance revealed that the improvement made by the women's psychological empowerment package on resilience and mental health in the follow-up phase was also stable (P<0.05).

Based on the findings of the present study, it is suggested that the psychological empowerment program be transformed into a permanent family care program at the Martyr and Veterans Affairs Foundation to improve the health of women with veteran spouses.