The Effectiveness of Single -Session Therapy (SST) on Marital  Intimacy of Couples: A Mixed -Methods Explanatory Study

Helia  Behrouznia; Keyvan  Salehi; Yaser  Madani; Somayeh  Shahmoradi

doi:10.18502/qjcr.v24i93.19068

Helia Behrouznia Ph.D. student of Counseling, Counseling Department, North Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
Keyvan Salehi Ph.D. of Educational Measurement and Evaluation, Associate Professor, Department of Methods, Educational Planning, and Curriculum, Faculty of Psychology and Education, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
Yaser Madani Ph.D of Counselor Education and Supervision, Assistant professor, Department of Counseling, Faculty of Psychology and Education, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Somayeh Shahmoradi Ph.D. of Family Counseling, Assistant professor, Department of Counseling, Faculty of Psychology and Education, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18502/qjcr.v24i93.19068

Keywords: Single-session therapy, marital intimacy, mixed methods, short- term therapy

Abstract

Aim: Single-session therapy is a method designed to address the client's issuesin the shortest possible time and emphasizes efficiency and maximum use of time.This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of single-session therapy onmarital intimacy, Methods: This research employed a mixed-methods explanatorydesign. The statistical population included all couples who visited to the BehzistClinic in Tehran in 2023 with marital problems with marital problems. A total of30 couples were selected through convenience sampling and assigned toexperimental and control groups. In the quantitative phase, the effect of thisintervention was assessed using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design with acontrol group, and using and the Walker and Thompson Marital Intimacy Scale(1983). In the qualitative phase, data from semi-structured interviews werecollected with the same participants from the experimental group and analyzed bydescriptive phenomenology method following the Colaizzi method. Findings: Thequantitative results indicated that single-session therapy significantly improvesmarital intimacy (P ≤ 0.05). The qualitative findings also revealed improvementsin marital intimacy, aligning with the subscales and questions of the MaritalIntimacy Scale and supporting the quantitative results. Conclusion: This studydemonstrates that single-session therapy can be used as a practical, short-term, andeffective approach to improve marital intimacy, and its results can be useful fortherapists and future researchers and encourage couples to use this method toenhance intimacy in their marital life.