Abstract

This study examined the effects of communication and conflict resolution skills training on mental health among
Iranian couples based on the PREPARE/ENRICH program. In this study, mental health was measured by
General Health Questionnaires (GHQ28). The study adopted a pre- and post-control group design in
emphasizing the effects of communication training and conflict resolution skills on mental health. The
participants in this research consisted of couples who were referred to the researcher by counseling center. The
referrals were done for about two months in 2009. Their problems included marital problems and marital
conflicts, commonly categorized as marital dissatisfaction, which were identified after a formal interview, testing
and screening. In order to assign the experimental and control groups, purposive random sampling was employed.
One hundred and eight participants comprised of 54 married couples were divided equally between control and
experimental groups and the training sessions lasted for eight weeks. In this training program, researchers
focused on the dependent variable of mental health, while communication and conflict resolution skills training
were the independent variables. Specifically, the t-test statistical analysis was employed to test for the potential
significant differences in couples’ scores of mental health between (i) the pre- and post-training scores for
couples of the experimental group; and (ii) between the post-training scores for the couples of the two groups.
The results indicated that teaching communication and conflict resolution skills had significant positive effects
on the mental health scores obtained from the studied couples.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.