Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Background and Objectives: The family, as a social unit, is considered a center of growth, development, and transformation of injuries and complications, which is a platform for the flourishing and collapse of relationships between its members. The present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of compassion-based therapy on psychological strength, psychological flexibility, and distress tolerance in women suffering from marital burnout.
 Method: The method of this study was a semi-randomized design with a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The statistical population of the study consisted of all eligible married women who referred to counseling and family clinics in Tehran in 2024. Using convenience sampling, thirty married women with above-average scores on the Marital Burnout Scale (Pines, 1996) were enrolled in the study and randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups (fifteen in each group). The two groups completed the Clough (2007) Psychological Resilience, Dennis and VanderWaal (2010) Psychological Resilience, and Simmons et al. (2005) Distress Tolerance questionnaires in the pre-test-posttest. Compassion-based therapy was administered to the intervention group in eight sixty-minute sessions, once a week; however, the control group did not receive the treatment program. Data analysis was performed using analysis of covariance in SPSS version 27. The significance level of the tests was set at 0.05.
Results: The results of the study indicated that compassion-based therapy was effective in increasing psychological resilience, psychological flexibility (alternatives, restraint, and humane behaviors), and distress tolerance (emotional distress tolerance, mental appraisal, and regulation) of women with marital burnout in the experimental group (P<0.001).
Conclusion: Based on the findings of the study, since compassion-based therapy facilitates empathy, it is effective in improving psychological resilience, psychological flexibility, and distress tolerance of women with marital burnout.