Introduction: Incompatible couples face many problems in their married life, especially in the areas of covert aggression and quality of marital life.Therefore, this study aimed to compare the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy and mindfulness therapy on marital justice and covert aggression in maladjusted couples.
Material and Methods:This was a semi-experimental study with a pre-test, post-test and control group design with a2-month follow-up.All maladjusted couples who referred to Dr.Rouhi's psychological clinic inTehran in 2022 constituted the statistical population of the study,48people were selected through convenience sampling, and randomly assigned to three equal groups of 16people.Data collection was done using Spanier's MAQ,Ghaffari etal.'sMJQ, andNelson &Carroll's CAQ.Therapeutic interventions were applied during 8sessions (one session of 90 minutes) for the experimental groups. The control group did not receive any intervention.Data were analyzed by two-way repeated measures ANOVA.
Results:The scores distributional justice(η=0.238, F=24.410),interactional justice (η=0.305, F=9.229), marital justice (η=0.529, F=23.585), love withdrawal (η=0.505, F=21.393), social sabotage (η=0.510, F=21.851), and covert aggression (η=0.684, F=45.549) in the test groups in the post-test stage significantly improved compared to the control group and, this improvement remained stable in the follow-up stage (p<0.05). Also, the results of Benferroni's post hoc test showed no significant difference between the two treatment approaches in terms of effectiveness (p>0.05).
Conclusion: According to the mentioned results, therapists, counselors and psychologists can use cognitive/behavioral and mindfulness-based therapeutic approaches to reduce the covert aggression and increase the marital life quality of vulnerable groups, including women suffering from marital maladjustment.