Effects of Dyadic Psychotherapy and Self- Monitoring Strategy on Marriage Anxiety among Young Married Couples in Ibadan Baptist Conference

Abstract

Sustaining a cordial relationship among married couples is a necessity for the marriage to fulfill its purpose. However, marriage anxiety often exerts force on married couples resulting in undesired behaviours. Evidences have shown that young married couples experience marriage anxiety which may lead to conflicts, separation, divorce, suicide and homicide. Previous studies had focused majorly on factors leading to marital anxiety with very few interventions to address the problem. This study, therefore, employed dyadic psychotherapy and self-monitoring strategy as interventions to reduce marriage anxiety among the participants. Ninety-four participants were selected in Ibadan Baptist Conference. Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale ( 16r="> 0.89) was used as screening instrument while the main instrument for post test was Hamilton Anxiety Scale ( 16r="> 0.86). The experiment lasted eight weeks. Seven null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and Scheffee post hoc test were used as tools of Analysis. The results show that there was a significant main effect of treatment on marriage anxiety (F_2.83=60.292; P<0.05, ?²=0.592). Dyadic psychotherapy and self-monitoring strategy were effective in reducing marriage anxiety. Thus, this paper recommended the effective management of marriage anxiety, the strategy involved as well as skills to reduce the marriage anxiety for married couples and professionals in the field of counselling to note in order to effectively treat marital anxiety among couples.