Forgiveness therapy versus alternative therapy for emotionally abused women

¶ … women come out of an abusive relationship, the negative psychological traumas they feel continue. This study makes a comparison between forgiveness therapy (FT) and alternative therapy (AT)-assertiveness, anger validation and interpersonal skill building for women who have been abused emotionally and had been separated permanently from their romantic partner or spouse for up to two years or more. A total of 20 women in Midwest city who were abused psychologically made up the participants. Psychological abuse from one's spouse characterizes a very agonizing infidelity, which often leads to very serious depressing psychological results for the partner who has been abused. There are reports of both standard deviations and mean scores for every measure at pretest, posttest, as well as follow-up for everyone in the forgiveness therapy group and both pretest and posttest for everyone in the alternative therapy group. This represents the first research for the demonstration of the efficacy of forgiveness therapy as a reliable therapeutic strategy for ameliorating the long-lasting adverse effects of psychological abuse from one's spouse. Furthermore, this research reveals the extent that forgiveness therapy advances development in the area of psychological health to a considerably greater level as compared to the alternative therapy the literature recommends for women who have been emotionally abused-that is, focusing on assertive limit setting, interpersonal skills, and anger validation (Reed & Engright, 2006).

Interaction

What makes the study a very interesting one for me is its attempt to have control over several prospective confounds, like the similar treatment durations for the two aforementioned conditions, presenting the psychological abuse alone without reporting the physical abuse, and separating the abused woman completely from the abusive former spouse for not less than two years during the period she is under the therapeutic treatment. The researcher compared forgiveness therapy and alternative therapy scores beginning from pretest and ending in posttest, covering all the dependent variables using matched-pair tests. Furthermore, the researcher carried out analysis on forgiveness therapy on how participants maintained gains by making a comparison between the pretest gain scores of each participant to the gain scores from her posttest beginning from the pretest and ending at the follow-up. The research was designed around strengths like adopting individualized therapy, advancing at the pace of each client and ending the therapy at the participant's discretion, manualized treatment, the practice of alternative treatment as the published literature advocated, and screening every participant, very careful to detect instances of psychological abuses. I had my personal concerns about effective professional therapies. But according to the study, forgiveness therapy makes such a resolution available in secure environment that gives the abused client the chance to progress at her own pace in the course of dealing with the injustice (Reed & Engright, 2006).

Reference

Reed, G.L., & Engright, R.D. (2006). The effect of forgiveness therapy on depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress for women after spousal emotional abuse. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 74(5), 920.