@2024 Afarand., IRAN

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ISSN: 2383-2150    Journal of Education and Community Health 2017;4(3):26-37

Background
Infertility is known as an important stressor threatening the personal, marital, familial, and social stability in all cultures around the world.
Previous Studies
... [1-4]. Peterson et al. in their research on the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment to therapy on couple therapy strategy, compatibility and depression in infertile couples stated that increasing the couple's commitment to one another greatly reduced the stress and anxiety of infertile women and increased the communication and number of social environments they attend. ... [5]. In this regard, Asadi et al. in their research stated that low levels of couples' commitment are related to couples burnout [6]. ... [7-11]. Kelly et al. in their latest metaphysical study concluded that Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy is more successful in treating psychological problems associated with couples' communication style than other couple therapies to [12]. … [13, 14].
Aim(s)
The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of emotionally focused couple therapy on marital commitment and couple burnout among infertile couples.
Research type
The present research is a quasi-experimental study with pre-test post-test design using control group.
Research society, place and time
This study was conducted on infertile couples referring to the private centers of infertility in Qom, Iran, from September 2015 to September 2016.
Sampling method and number
In order to select the sample, 42 infertile couples (using convenience sampling) from nine private centers of Qom province responded to the questionnaires, of whom 30 couples who had low commitment and burnout and they met the inclusion criteria and also had willingness to enter the research were selected as the sample. They were randomly divided into the experimental (15 couples) and control groups (15 couples).
Used devices&materials
Used devices & materials Emotionally focused couple therapy was performed in ten 2-hour sessions (2 times a week) for the experimental group. This therapeutic protocol is adopted from Johnson book (2004) and its effectiveness has been confirmed in studies, including Najafi et al. [16] and Davarnia et al. [17]. Data collection tools included demographic characteristics questionnaire, Dimensions of Commitment Inventory (DCI), and Couple Burnout Measure (CBM). After training sessions, two groups again responded to the Adams and Jones' DCI and CBM. Demographic characteristics included: age, sex, education, length of marriage, income, cause of infertility, duration of infertility, history of attending counseling and psychotherapy treatments, and history of chronic physical and psychological disorders. In this study, SPSS 16 software and Univariate covariance analysis at the level of 0.05 and Multivariate Covariance Analysis (0.01) were used for analyzing the data.
Findings by Text
The mean and standard deviation of couples’ age in the control and experimental groups were 40.4±4.8 and 39.93±5.2 years, respectively. Most of subjects had associate degree. Regarding the duration of marriage, it should be noted that most of the subjects in the experimental group had 15 and 20 years of marriage, and in the control group there was no difference in the marriage length. The highest income in two groups was between 2 and 3 million toman. In addition, abnormalities in the uterine tubes in the experimental group and abnormalities in the uterine tubes and endometriosis in the control group were the common causes of infertility. The mean and standard deviation of marital commitment and couple burnout in two groups in the pretest and posttest are presented in Table 1. According to the paired t-test scores in the pre-test and post-test, the mean scores of the different dimensions of marital commitment in the test group were increased in the post-test compared with the control group (P=0.027). Also, the mean scores of couple burnout in two groups indicated that the mean scores of the experimental group in comparison with the control group decreased significantly in the post-test (P=0.024). On the other hand, according to the results of Table 2, the effect size of all intragroup variables were less than 0.05, which indicates the effectiveness of emotionally focused couple therapy on improving the marital commitment of infertile couples. In addition, the results of Table 3 showed that the effect size of couple burnout intragroup variable using univariate covariance analysis was significant at less than 0.01. Therefore, it can be concluded that emotionally focused couple therapy is effective in the reduction of couple burnout in infertile couples.
Main comparison to the similar studies
... [15-21]. The findings of this study are consistent with the results of studies by Fletcher [22], Love et al. [23], Zuccarini et al. [24] and Greil et al. [25]. Also, the results are consistent with the results of studies by Zarei & Sabet, Fallahzadeh & Sanai Zaker and Asadpour et al. in Iran [26-28]. ... [29, 30]. The findings showed a significant difference between the burnout scores among the groups in the post-test, which is consistent with the international studies by Wiebe and Johnson [31], Allan [32], Denton et al. [33] and Pines [34], and also Davarniya et al. [17] KhojastehMehr et al. [35] and Soudani et al. [36] in Iran.
Suggestions

Limitations
The present study was done on infertile couples, which can not be generalized to other couples.
Conclusions
As the findings indicated, the emotionally focused couple therapy can improve marital commitment and decrease couple burnout.
Acknowledgments
The authors are thankful to the officials of Qom's infertility centers and all the couples who helped the research team by regular attendance in the treatment.
Conflict of interest

Ethical Permissions
The written informed consent was obtained from the couples in the demographic information questionnaire and they were assured of confidentiality of data.
Funding Sources
It is worth noting that this research was supported by the authors.

TABLES and CHARTS

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