Effectiveness of Behavioral Couple Therapy in Improvement of Marriage Performance and Reduction of Marital Conflicts in Couples with One Addicted Member

The purpose of this paper is to determine differences related to marriage performance and marital conflicts among couples with one addicted member which are created due to behavioral couple therapy. To this end, 30 pairs (60) of the patients of the Center for Therapeutic Community (TC) in Mashhad were selected using random sampling and were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Experimental group received 12 weekly sessions of 60-minute behavioral couple therapy while the control group did not receive any specific intervention. In this study to collect data on pre-test and post-test questionnaires, marriage function (MFAI) and marital conflict (MCQ) were used. Whitney U-test results (in case of non-normal distribution scale) indicate significant differences between control and experimental groups on the variables of marriage and marital conflicts. Comparison of averages showed that training in behavioral marital therapy significantly improves performance and effectively reduces marital conflict, and married couples in the experimental group showed a significant increase (P <0/05) in marriage performance and significant reduction (P <0 / 05) in marital conflicts. In general, the results of this study suggest that couples who have received behavioral couple therapy compared with couples who did not receive this treatment, had better marriage performance and less marital conflict.