What is it about?

A study of the strategic hope-focused approach to couple counseling finds that couples who complete the counseling improve in their relationship after treatment. The results of improvement hold up in a 2-10 year post-treatment follow up analysis. Couples who started counseling with clinical scores, indicating dissatisfaction, consistently improved after treatment and maintained their results. Couples who started counseling scoring in the enrichment range, or happier, maintained their happiness.

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Why is it important?

The long-term effects of couple counseling is largely unexplored. This is the first study of the hope-focused approach long-term effects. The results are similar to other couple counseling long-term studies which find couples counseling is effective and tends to have a long-term positive effect overall.

Perspectives

This clinical study examined couples who sought couple counseling in a clinic that specializes in short-term (8-12 session) strategic hope-focused couple counseling. The clinic offers spiritually accommodative couple counseling, and while most couples requested some spirituality addressed in their counseling the results of standard treatment compared to spiritually accommodative treatment were the same. The hope-focused approach to couple counseling is an approach that is designed to be accessible to not only experts in couple counseling, but general clinicians, master's level counselors, and relationship educators. The accessibility of this treatment makes it unique.

Jennifer Ripley
Regent University

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Short- and long-term outcomes of hope focused couple therapy., Spirituality in Clinical Practice, December 2021, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/scp0000286.
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