Background & Aims: The family is the basis of every society and in today's society where there are working women, working women have many responsibilities and find themselves in all external and internal responsibilities, so they have to take care of all matters: spouse, children, and expense management. The family is considered the most important pillar of any society, and for this reason, family-related issues are very important, family therapy is one of the treatments that can help families a lot by covering all family members. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of family therapy on family functioning and marital satisfaction in married female employees.
Methods: This research was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of family therapy on family functioning and marital satisfaction in married female employees. The case population was married female employees of Kerman city. The sample examined in this research was 30 people who were divided into two control groups (15 people) and an experimental group (15 people) who were selected by the available sampling method and the experimental group participated in 8 one-hour therapy sessions. The data was obtained from Tavitian et al.'s family functioning questionnaire (1987) and Enrich's marital satisfaction (1989) and analyzed with the statistical method of covariance analysis. It is a 125-question questionnaire for married couples that examines communication, conflict resolution, role relationships, financial management, expectations, sex, personality compatibility, marital satisfaction, and other personal beliefs related to marriage. The test was designed by University of Minnesota family psychologists David Olson, Fournier, and Drinkman in 1989. This couple was initially created as a method to evaluate the health of married couples' relationships. The original version of the Enrich Marital Satisfaction Test had 115 questions, which due to the large number of questions that made the subjects tired, its 35-question form by Olson (1998) ), was prepared. After translating the questions, it was seen by psychological experts, and the content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed. In the next step, the questionnaire was implemented on a group of 11 people, and its reliability coefficient was calculated through the alpha coefficient, which was 93. Obtained. Due to the large amount of questions that made the subjects tired, it was decided to prepare a short form of it. In this way, first, the correlation of each question with the entire questionnaire was calculated through the correlation coefficient. Then the questions that had a relatively high correlation were selected. This selection was made equally from different scales of the questionnaire and in this way, a total of 35 questions were selected and again the reliability coefficient of the 35-question form was calculated on a group of 11 people using an alpha coefficient, which is 95/95. Obtained. After reviewing and studying the original questionnaire and calculating its reliability and validity, the mentioned method was approved by the supervisor and it was used to estimate the level of marital satisfaction.
Results: The research results showed that family therapy affects family functioning and marital satisfaction in married female employees. Family therapy was used as a fixed factor and family functioning as a covariate variable. According to the significant level in the interaction (fixed factor * covariate variable), it was observed that the covariance relationship between these two variables is significant. Its effect is equal to 6202.185 and the hypothesis is confirmed. In other words, family therapy has a significant effect on family functioning in married female employees (P<0.05). Family therapy was used as a fixed factor and life satisfaction as a covariate variable. According to the significant level in the interaction (fixed factor * covariate variable), it was observed that the covariance relationship between these two variables is significant and its effect is equal to 206.980 and the hypothesis is confirmed. In other words, family therapy has a significant effect on increasing life satisfaction in married female employees (P<0.05).
Conclusion: According to the results obtained from the research, it can be said that the use of family therapy helps a lot in improving family problems. Today, knowing the factors affecting divorce and preventing it is considered a mental health priority. The family plays an all-encompassing role in determining the level of mental health of its members, and due to its wide range of actions, it strongly affects the psychological functions of a person. Researchers believe that the existence of defects in communication, especially the lack of active listening skills, leads to an increase in emotional arousal and its frequency, resulting in the loss of marital satisfaction and has adverse effects on the functioning of the couple's communication patterns. It emphasizes the role of the emotional system of the family in the health and quality of the relationships of the members of the family system. According to Boen, the main source of chronic anxiety and suffering from psychological disorders and family problems, which reduces constructive marital communication, is the emotional system of the family. When people are in stressful situations, most of the time, they hardly have the ability to distinguish between their emotional and rational systems, and they show more emotional reactions than rational reactions to the environment. In the current research and in the process of intervention with the Bueni approach, it was tried by using different therapeutic strategies such as triangulation, increasing awareness of triangles that sometimes appear in the family, in order to improve the relationship between family members and as a result, reduce blame and increase responsibility. Reducing emotional distance and fusion, managing emotions and using problem-solving in the face of interpersonal challenges, and becoming aware of the cyclical cause-and-effect relationship process in the formation and continuation of conflict based on family system concepts, these factors increase the ability of people to Acceptance of the difficulty they will face increases and leads to their emotional self-awareness. The result was an increase in insight into the subjects' own communication patterns and subsequently the application of methods to strengthen them, which can lead to the improvement of family functioning and the improvement of life satisfaction in the individual.