Abstract
Background:Divorce rates have increased during the last decade, leading to a greater focus of marital scholars on the importance of understanding couple-maintaining strategies within marital life. Distresses in couples are attributable to difficulties controlling felt, experienced, and expressed emotions; thus, emotion dysregulation is a core stressor in couples with maladaptive responses.Objective:The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) on outpatient couples to treat emotion dysregulation.Methods:We recruited 20 couples with marital distress in which partners presented emotion dysregulation. We offered the couples the opportunity to join a couple DBT group at their convenience and based on the immediate availability of treatment slots. We measured the treatment efficacy using psychometric tools (the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) and the Dyadic Adjustment Ccale (DAS) at baseline and after DBT therapy.Results:Both male and female partners presented significant improvements in marital adjustment DAS and emotion regulation scores. Female partners showed significantly greater amplitude changes in both scales. Female partners showed significant improvement in most DERS subscales (except the GOALS subscale); on the other hand, male partners showed significant improvements in impulse, awareness, strategies, and clarity subscales. We found significant improvements in most DAS subscales in both sexes; only affectional expression remained unchanged before and after therapy.Conclusion:DBT for couples is an effective approach to treat emotion dysregulation.
Highlights
IntroductionInterpersonal long-term relation, often seen as the happy ending to a love story, statistical figures related to divorces are alarming
Marriage is a complex, interpersonal long-term relation, often seen as the happy ending to a love story, statistical figures related to divorces are alarming
We recruited 20 couples with marital distress where partners presented emotion dysregulation based on the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) examination results [7]
Summary
Interpersonal long-term relation, often seen as the happy ending to a love story, statistical figures related to divorces are alarming. One-tenth of married couples divorce within the first five years of marital life; epidemiological studies show that this figure doubles after 10 years of conjoint couple life. Such high divorce rate figures have attracted the attention of scholars, who want to understand the maladaptive couple-lifemaintaining strategies that lead couples to get separated [1, 2]. In the mutual avoidance model, both partners try to solve their conflicts and interpersonal differences through escape psychological mechanisms and get progressively withdrawn from the shared couple life, creating an interrelational gap with an isolated life for each partner. Distresses in couples are attributable to difficulties controlling felt, experienced, and expressed emotions; emotion dysregulation is a core stressor in couples with maladaptive responses
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