Comparing the effectiveness of treatment based on meta-emotion, narrative therapy and imagotherapy on marital burnout in conflicted married women

The present study aimed to compare the effectiveness of treatment based on meta-emotion, narrative therapy, and imago therapy on marital burnout in conflicted married women. The method of the current research was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design and a control group with a two-month follow-up period. The statistical population of the research included married women with marital conflicts who were referred to Garmsar counseling centers in 2022, 60 of whom were selected voluntarily and randomly assigned to three experimental groups and one control group. The instrument of this research was Pines's Marital Depression Questionnaire (1996, CBM). The educational intervention based on Gottman's meta-emotion approach (2011), O'Hanlon's (1994), and Hendrix's imago therapy (2015) was implemented in 8 sessions of 90 minutes once a week as a group for the first, second, and third experimental groups. The data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance. The results of the analysis of variance showed that there is a significant difference between the groups in the post-test and follow-up of marital burnout (P<0.05). Also, the results showed that there is a significant difference between the three treatments, and imago therapy was significantly more effective than meta-emotion and narrative therapy on the marital burnout of conflicted married women (P<0.05). It can be concluded that imago therapy can be used as a supportive treatment for marital burnout in conflicted married women.