Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Background and Objectives: Addiction and its effects are known to be among the most important risk factors for mental and physical health dimensions worldwide. Among them, women with substance-dependent spouses are seriously exposed to various types of substance abuse harms. The present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of psychological empowerment on health-oriented lifestyle behaviors and emotional flexibility of women with addicted spouses.
 Method: The method of this study was a semi-structured pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population of the present study included all women with substance-dependent spouses referring to addiction treatment centers in Tehran in 2024. Using purposive sampling, 40 women were selected as samples and randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups (15 people in each group). The two groups completed the health-oriented lifestyle questionnaires of Lali et al. (2012) and the emotional flexibility questionnaire of Rashid and Bayat (2019) in the pre-test-post-test. Psychological empowerment was implemented in the intervention group in the form of twelve sixty-minute sessions, each session once a week; but the control group did not receive a treatment program. Data analysis was performed using analysis of covariance in SPSS version 26 software. The significance level of the tests was considered to be 0.05.
Results: The results of the study indicated that psychological empowerment was effective on health-oriented lifestyle behaviors and emotional flexibility of women with addicted spouses in the experimental group (P<0.001).
Conclusion: Based on the findings of the study, since psychological empowerment improves coping skills in individuals, it is effective in improving health-oriented lifestyle and emotional flexibility of women with addicted spouses.