The Effectiveness of Narrative Therapy on Family Resilience and Marital Happiness in conflicted couples

Authors
Department of Counseling, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil
Abstract
The present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of narrative therapy on family resilience and marital happiness of Conflicted couple. The research method was semi-experimental with pre-test-post-test and three-month follow-up. The statistical population of this research included including all Conflicted couples of Tabriz in 1402, who had referred to Happy Life and Mobin Counseling Centers of Tabriz. According to the research design, a sample of 32 people was selected by purposive sampling and randomly replaced in the experimental group (16 people) and the control group (16 people). Data were collected using the family resilience Scale (Sikbi, 2005), and marital happiness Questionnaire (Azrin et all., 1973). The experimental group received 10 sessions of 60 minutes of narrative therapy, and the control group, which was on the waiting list, did not receive any training. The data were analyzed using analysis of variance with repeated measurements and Bonferroni's post hoc test. The results showed that after controlling the effects of the pre-test, there was a significant difference between the post-test average of the two groups in family resilience (F=104/873, Eta= 0/778) and marital happiness(F=38/529, Eta= 0/562) (P<0.05), which can indicate the effectiveness of the mentioned intervention on the mentioned variables and Also, the stability of the effectiveness is in the follow-up phase. The results of this research showed that narrative therapy can be used as effective approach in increase family resilience and marital happiness.
Keywords

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