The Efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Couple's Therapy (CBCT) on Marital Adjustment of PTSD-diagnosed Combat Veterans

Abstract

Background: Impaired marital adjustment has been introduced as one major complication of PTSD. There are controversial results about the role of Cognitive Behavioral Couple's Therapy (CBCT) on improvement of marital adjustment of PTSD veterans; the efficacy of CBCT on marital adjustment improvement is questioned in some studies and also there are no similar researches about the affect of CBCT on marital adjustment, conducted among Middle Eastern PTSD veterans. These factors motivated us to perform and evaluate our CBCT protocol among Iranian combat veterans. Methods: we enrolled 60 PTSD veterans with low degrees of marital adjustment. They were randomly distributed into intervention and control groups. Both groups have been evaluated for marital adjustment by means of ENRICH scale before and after intervention and the results were analyzed by MANOVA test. Results: The analysis was based on difference of T2 and T1 (T2-T1) where the mean of T2-T1 was -2.63 for control group and 44.9 for intervention group, sum of squares 69552.7, f=95.4 and sig.>000.1. Conclusion: this shows that the prevalence of marital maladjustment is high among PTSD veterans (43%) and the efficacy of CBCT was significant both for veterans themselves and their spouses.