The Effectiveness of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) on Reducing Couple Burnout and Improvement of the Quality of Life of Married Women

Background & Aim: Solution-focused brief therapy is one of the postmodern therapeutic approaches in the area of family and marriage, which puts emphasis on finding solutions by the client in cooperation with the therapist. The current research was conducted by the aim of investigating the effectiveness of solution-focused brief therapy on reducing couple burnout and improvement of the quality of life of married women. Methods: The current research is an interventional and quasi-experimental study which uses pretest-posttest with control group. The population of this research included all the women who attended the center of mental health helpers in bojnoord city during the summer of 1393 (2014), which were seeking to attend the treatment plan in order to resolve their marital problems. Based on available sampling and after the initial screening, 30 women who were qualified to participate in the research and who gained one standard deviation below the mean in the questionnaire were selected and they were placed in two groups of experiment and control through random assignment. The research tools were Pains couple burnout measurement 1996 (CBM) and the world health organization quality of life questionnaire 1996 (WHOQOL), that were completed by the participants in pretest and posttest stages. The treatment sessions of solution-focused brief therapy were performed in 7 two-hour sessions in groups and step-by-step for the participants of the experiment group, but the control group did not receive any intervention and they were put on the waiting list. The data were analyzed through MANCOVA (multivariate analysis of covariance) in the statistical software of SPSS, version 18. Results: The results indicated that after performing the solution-focused intervention, marital burnout among the women in the experiment group has reduced and their quality of life has been improved.no significance change was seen in the control group. Conclusion: The solution-focused brief therapy is effective in reducing marital problems. This brief therapeutic method can be used in counseling centers and family education classes in order to improve marital problems of the clients