Comparison of the Effectiveness of Telehealth for Family Therapy (TFT) and Cognitive-Behavioral Couple Therapy on Family Conflict and Marital Intimacy in Corona

The aim of this study was to evaluate the comparison the effectiveness of telehealth for family therapy and Cognitive-behavioral couple therapy on family conflicts and marital intimacy in Corona. This research is applied in terms of purpose and semi-experimental in terms of research method. The semi-experimental design of the current research was pre-test-post-test and follow-up (2 months) with the control group. The statistical population of this study consisted of all couples who referred to the Khorramabad Divorce Reduction Counseling Center on behalf of family courts or on their own initiative to resolve family disputes. The sample consisted of 36 couples (72 people) referring to divorce counseling centers in Khorramabad city who were selected by Convenience Sampling method and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Structured clinical interview (Zimmerman, 2013), revised marital conflict questionnaire (Sanai Zaker and et al., 2008) and marital intimacy scale (Oulia, 2006) were used to collect data. Remote telehealth for family therapy was conducted in the experimental group using the model of Langarizadeh et al. (2017) and Borcsa and Pomini (2018) and cognitive-behavioral counseling using Epstein and et al (2016) model. the control group did not receive any intervention during this period. The collected data were analyzed using Multivariate analysis of covariance test. The results showed telehealth for family therapy (TFT) and Cognitive-behavioral couple therapy is effective on family conflicts and marital intimacy (P≥0.001). The results of the follow-up phase showed that the stability of the interventions in the follow-up phase was maintained on the scores of family conflicts and marital intimacy. The results of Bonferroni follow-up tests showed that remote telehealth for family therapy compared to Cognitive-behavioral couple therapy significantly increased marital intimacy and reduced family conflicts. According to the results, it can be stated that remote family counseling training and cognitive-behavioral couple therapy can provide effective solutions to reduce family conflicts and increase marital intimacy through the use of useful and cheap technologies along with face-to-face counseling. especially during the covid-19 pandemic for couples and families.