The Effectiveness of Telehealth for Family Therapy (TFT) on Family Conflict and Marital Intimacy in Corona

Due to the high cost of conventional family-centered mental health care, the focus on remote family counseling interventions has increased in recent years. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of telehealth for family therapy on family conflicts, marital intimacy and parent-child conflict in Corona. This research is applied in terms of purpose and semi-experimental in terms of research method. 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 24 couples (48 people) referring to divorce counseling centers in Khorramabad city who were selected by random 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 questionnaire (Oulia, 2006) were used to collect data. Remote family counseling training was conducted in the experimental group using the model of Langarizadeh et al. (2017) and Borcsa and Pomini (2018); and the control group did not receive any intervention during this period. The collected data were analyzed using Mann–Whitney. The results of Mann–Whitney showed that distance family counseling training is effective on family conflicts and marital intimacy (P≥0.001). The results of the follow-up stage showed that the stability of the intervention in the follow-up stage was maintained on the scores of family conflicts and marital intimacy. Remote telehealth for family therapy can bring effective solutions to reduce family conflicts and increase marital intimacy, especially during the covid-19 pandemic, for couples and families through the use of useful and cheap technologies along with face-to-face counseling.