Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Reducing the Components of Couple Burnout in Veterans Spouses

Aims: The veterans and their families are suffering psychiatric pressures due to war occasions many years after the wars. Marital burnout can badly affect the quality of life of not only the veterans, but also their families and society. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment based therapy on reduction of marital burnout components in wives of the veterans. Instrument & Methods: In the semi-experimental pretest-posttest study with a control group, 30 wives of the veterans of Piranshahr, referred to the consoulting and care unit of Piranshahr Martyrs and Veterans Foundation to receive psychological professional helps and resolve their marital problems, were studied in 2015. The subjects, selected via available sampling method, were randomly divided into experimental and control groups (n=15 per group). Data was collected using marital burnout inventory. 8 acceptance and commitment based group-treatment sessions were presented to experimental group. Data was analyzed using one-variable and multi-variable analysis of covariance tests. Findings: At the posttest stage, the mean scores of marital burnout and its components in experimental group were significantly lower than control group (p=0.001). Conclusion: Acceptance and commitment based therapy is effective on the reduction of marital burnout components in the wives of the veterans