Prevention of marital distress by enhancing the coping skills of couples: 1-year follow-up-study

This article presents a new preventive approach (Couples Coping Enhancement Training CCET) aimed at expanding upon the scope of current prevention programs by focussing on stress issues and individual and dyadic coping skills. The cognitive behavioral prevention program is based on stress and coping research in couples and seek to improve important skills with an 18-hour course. The effectiveness of the approach is examined with respect to 143 couples over a period of one year. The results show that couples participating in the program benefit in terms of a significant increase in martial quality and that intervention couples appraise their relationship even after one year as substantially improved in a number of domains (quality of martial communication, intimacy etc). Our results support the importance of prevention for couples with low marital satisfaction even if they have been living together for many years.