The Effectiveness of Forgiveness Therapy on the emotional empathy of spouses of drug addicts

Esa Jafari¹ Kian Hosseininejad² Ali Salmani³

1) Associate professor of psychology, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran.
2) Master of Psychology, Department of Psychology, Islamic Azad University Khalkhal Branch, Khalkhal, Iran.
3) Master of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Mohaghegh Ardabili University.

IOI Code : XDKA-GZCZF
Publication : First National Student Scientific Conference on Psychology(cpssuma.ir)
Abstract :
    The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of forgiveness therapy on the emotional empathy of spouses of drug addicts. The research method was experimental and with pre-test design, post-test with control group. The statistical population of this study included all spouses addicted to drugs in Talesh city who had referred to addiction treatment centers with their husbands in 1397. Using the available sampling method, 30 samples were selected and randomly assigned to experimental (n = 15) and control (n = 15) groups. Emotional empathy questionnaire was used to collect data. The experimental group underwent 12 sessions of 90 minutes as a group under the training of Robert Enright (2001). Analysis of covariance was used to analyze the data. Statistical results showed that there was a significant difference between the level of emotional empathy in pre-test and post-test. These results mean that forgiveness-therapy is effective on substance-dependent spouses emotional empathy. Due to the effectiveness of forgiveness-therapy training in increasing emotional empathy, mental health professionals and therapists are recommended to use the forgiveness-therapy protocol to increase their clients emotional empathy.

Keywords : forgiveness therapy drug dependence emotional empathy