Attributions about the marital discord/depression link and therapy outcome

Abstract

Our previously reported between-groups treatment outcome analyses indicated that depressed, maritally discordant women became significantly less depressed following either cognitive therapy for depression or marital therapy. However, only marital therapy significantly increased marital satisfaction. Judgments of these depressed women about whether one problem, depression or marital discord, preceded or caused the other were unrelated to their final post-treatment depression scores for both cognitive and marital therapy. However, in the cognitive therapy group, there were significant relationships between both time precedence judgments and attribution about the cause of depression and post treatment marital discord. Women in cognitive therapy who believed that their marital discord preceded or was the primary cause of their depression were more likely to be maritally discordant at posttreatment than women who did not believe that marital discord preceded or caused their depression.