Abstract
Background & Objectives: Divorce has become a prevalent event in contemporary societies. Official statistics in Iran also reflect a significant increase in the divorce rate in recent years. The dissolution of marriage through divorce can lead to considerable short–term and long–term consequences, adversely affecting the quality of life and psychological well–being of divorced women who are heads of households. Consequently, identifying and implementing effective educational and therapeutic interventions for this population is of considerable importance. Among available interventions, emotionally–focused therapy (EFT) has gained recognition as a psychological treatment with robust empirical support. Although the efficacy of EFT in enhancing post–divorce adjustment has been established, limited research has explored the application of group–based EFT specifically for divorced female heads of household. Moreover, a notable gap exists in understanding the intervention's effects on key variables such as acceptance and action, and positive and negative affect within this demographic. Therefore, the present study was designed to examine the effectiveness of emotionally–focused therapy on post–divorce adjustment, acceptance and action, and positive and negative affect among divorced women who are heads of households.
Methods: This quasi–experimental study employed a pretest–posttest design with a 2–month follow–up and a control group. The study population consisted of all divorced women who had been referred to the Marivan City Judiciary Counseling Center, Iran, during 2022 and 2023. From this population, 30 eligible volunteers were purposively selected and randomly assigned to either an emotionally–focused therapy (experimental) group or a control group (15 participants per group). The inclusion criteria were as follows: voluntary consent to participate and completion of an informed consent form; aged 20 to 50 years; being the head of the household; having entered into marital cohabitation following a formal marriage contract; and possession of an official divorce decree. The exclusion criteria included diagnosis of a specific psychological disorder, receiving psychotherapy after the divorce, substance or alcohol dependence, remarriage after the divorce, withdrawal or expressed unwillingness to continue participation, absence from more than 2 sessions, and illiteracy. The instruments used were the Fisher Divorce Adjustment Scale (Fisher, 1978), the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire–II (Bond et al., 2011), and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson et al., 1988). The experimental group received nine 120‑minute sessions of emotionally–focused therapy based on a protocol adapted from Mirzazadeh et al.'s study, while the control group received no intervention. Before the intervention, a pretest was administered to both groups, wherein participants completed the aforementioned questionnaires. Following the treatment phase, a posttest was conducted for both groups. Two months after the intervention sessions concluded, all participants were reassessed using the same instruments as a follow‑up measurement. This study adhered to ethical research standards, including obtaining voluntary informed consent from all participants and ensuring the confidentiality and anonymity of their data. Data were analyzed using descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics, including repeated‑measures analysis of variance and Bonferroni post‑hoc tests, with a significance level of 0.05 in SPSS, version 24.
Results: The results showed significant effects of group, time, and group × time interaction on post–divorce adjustment, acceptance and action, and positive and negative affect variables (p<0.001). Based on the effect size calculation, the group factor explained 60%, 31%, and 20% of the variance in the changes for the aforementioned variables, respectively. Additionally, in the experimental group, the differences between pretest, posttest, and follow–up were significant for post–divorce adjustment (p<0.001) and positive and negative affect (p<0.001). Also, the differences between posttest and follow–up were significant for post–divorce adjustment (p<0.001) and positive and negative affect (p=0.025). In the variable of acceptance and action, the difference between pretest and posttest was significant (p<0.001), but there was no significant difference between posttest and follow–up (p=0.813).
Conclusion: According to the findings, emotionally–focused therapy is an effective intervention in improving post–divorce adjustment, acceptance, and action, and positive and negative affect in divorced women who are heads of household. Therefore, it is suggested that emotionally–focused therapy, along with other psychological interventions, be utilized.