The Effectiveness of Couple Therapy Based on McMaster's Functional Model on Family Resilience and Psychological Toughness of Couples on The Verge of Divorce

Abstract

Family is the most important institution of human society, which is the most fundamental and the first institution of society, and the first step to establish this social institution is marriage. In other words, the family is known as the most important unit of societies, and marriage is the most basic human relationship; Because it forms the primary structure of family relationship and the growth of the next generations. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of couple therapy based on McMaster's model on the psychological toughness and family resilience of couples on the verge of divorce. The current research was applied in terms of its purpose, and in terms of method, based on the research design and method, it was a semi-experimental study with a pre-test and post-test design (with an experimental group and a control group and a three-month follow-up period). The statistical population used in the present study included all couples who referred to family counseling and couple therapy centers in the 9th district of Tehran in 1401, and 40 people (20 couples) were selected randomly from among these people using the purposeful sampling method. An experimental group (20 people or 10 couples) and a control group (20 people or 10 couples) were assigned. Then, a couple therapy package based on the McMaster model was implemented on the test group based on Ryan's (2005) protocol. The research tools include the family resilience questionnaire of Gross & John (2003) and the psychological toughness questionnaire of Tangney et al. (2004) was. In order to statistically analyze the data, analysis of variance with repeated measurements and Bonferroni's post hoc test and SPSS software version 26 were used. According to the F value and the significance level of the value obtained in the variable of family resilience (F = 6.52 and P = 0.003) and psychological toughness (F = 6.30 and P = 0.003), it can be concluded that the variable Independent (couple therapy based on the McMaster model) has significantly changed the dependent variables (family resilience and psychological toughness). Therefore, it can be concluded that the changes made in the dependent variables were caused by the implementation of couple therapy based on the McMaster model on the experimental group. The results of Bonferroni's post hoc test showed that the effects of couple therapy based on the McMaster model on the research variables were stable. Based on the available findings, it can be concluded that couple therapy based on McMaster's model was effective on family resilience and psychological toughness of couples on the verge of divorce. Therefore, it is suggested that experts benefit from the techniques of this approach in their work.