The Effects of Dialectical Behavior Therapy on Marital Burnout Among Females on the Brink of Divorce

Individuals require satisfying relationships. Couples experiencing an intimate relationship with their spouse can more effectively express themselves and their needs to their spouse. Contrarily, marital burnout has numerous emotional and biopsychological consequences. A successful approach concerning couple conflict, marital satisfaction, as well as the improvement of mental health status, including depression, anxiety, and emotional instability is Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). The standard DBT protocol for individuals with marital conflict includes 4 basic abilities, as follows: effective communication, emotion regulation, mindfulness, and distress tolerance skills. DBT skills could reduce marital burnout with its effect on reducing intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts. The current study aimed to investigate the effects of DBT on marital burnout among females on the brink of divorce.

This was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest and a control group design. The study statistical population included all females on the brink of divorce in Sari City, Iran, in 2019, referring to the Welfare Office of this city. Among them, 30 women were selected based on the research inclusion criteria, and obtaining higher mean scores in the Pines Couple Burnout Measure (CBM) (Paines, 1996). The study subjects were selected using a purposive sampling method; accordingly, they were randomly assigned to two groups of 15 participants (experimental & control). The study inclusion criteria consisted of living with the spouse in the same house, having at least one child, and 5 years passed from cohabitation. The study exclusion criteria included substance dependence, mental illnesses, as well as murder and adultery experiences. Then, the experimental group received 8 weekly 2-hour sessions of DBT. After the end of the training sessions, the posttest assessment was performed and the collected information was analyzed. The CBM consists of 3 main components, as follows: physical burnout, emotional burnout, and mental burnout. The content of the therapy sessions was based on the High-Conflict Couple book (Foruzzetti, 2006) and the Dialectical Behavior Therapy Techniques book (Mc Kee et al., 2007), i.e., per the Linehan’s DBT skills protocol (1993). The obtained data were analyzed using Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) in SPSS.

In the experimental group, the mean posttest scores of marital burnout and its components decreased, compared to the pretest values; however; in the controls, these scores did not change much from pretest to posttest. The total pretest mean (SD) scores of marital burnout in the test and control groups were 116.47(8.45) and 112.33(7.78), respectively. The total posttest mean (SD) scores of marital burnout in the experimental and control groups were 69.20(10.61) and 99.07(7.00), respectively.Concerning the physical aspect of marital burnout, the pretest mean (SD) scores of the case and control groups were 38.67(3.69) and 39.27(3.90), respectively; the same values in the posttest stage were 22.87(5.73) and 35.07(4.69), respectively. In terms of the emotional dimension of marital burnout, the pretest mean (SD) values of the test and control groups were 37.73(3.73) and 36.00(3.07), respectively. Moreover, in the posttest stage, the mean (SD) scores of the DBT and control groups were 23.07(4.57) and 31.80(3.42), respectively. Respecting the psychological aspect of marital burnout, the pretest mean (SD) values of the test and control groups were 40.07(3.45) and 37.07(4.04), respectively; the same scores in the posttest stage among the experimental and control groups were 23.27(4.52) and 32.20(3.61), respectively. The MANCOVA results (by controlling the pretest scores effect) revealed a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in the posttest scores of the marital burnout and its components (p<0.001).

The present research findings suggested that DBT could effectively reduce couple burnout in the studied subjects. Thus, this treatment could be applied as an appropriate approach to reduce marital problems among females’ on the brink of divorce.