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Apr 20

Marriage Counseling Proven Effective (Again!)

By Jay Slupesky
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About Marriage Therapy

I love it when counseling is scientifically tested and shown to be effective!

The largest, most comprehensive clinical trial of couple therapy ever conducted has found that therapy can help even very distressed married couples if both partners want to improve their marriage. The study also involved the longest and most comprehensive follow-up assessment of couple therapy ever conducted.

“It takes only one person to end a marriage but two people to make it work,” said Andrew Christensen, a UCLA professor of psychology and lead author of the study, which appears in the April issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, a publication of the American Psychological Association.

The study included 134 married couples, 71 in Los Angeles and 63 in Seattle. Most were in their 30s and 40s, and slightly more than half had children. The couples were “chronically, seriously distressed” and fought frequently, but they were hoping to improve their marriages.

The couples received up to 26 therapy sessions within a year. Psychologists conducted follow-up sessions approximately every six months for five years after therapy ended.

When the therapy sessions were over, about two-thirds of the couples overall had shown significant clinical improvement.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 at 7:32 am and is filed under About Marriage Therapy.

2 Responses to “Marriage Counseling Proven Effective (Again!)”

  1. Therapy Directory Says:
    May 16th, 2010 at 11:11 pm

    Hi

    I agree with your views.

    I believe that marriage is becoming very difficult task to handle as we see that problem behind most marriage clashes is a lack of communication. A trained marriage counselor identifies the problems and finds ways to restore the broken relationship by resolving the conflicts and healing the wounds.

    Keep writing

    Thanks

  2. Amanda Says:
    July 30th, 2010 at 2:20 pm

    thank you so much, now i have the numbers to share on!

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