Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy With Couples: Empirical Status

This article briefly summarizes the behavioral, cognitive, and affective factors that have been implicated in couples’ relationship problems, describes representative interventions for those factors, and reviews the current status of outcome research on cognitive-behavioral therapy for couples. Although the initial studies have provided encouraging findings concerning the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral treatment for distressed couples, limitations in the number and scope of the studies leave many unanswered questions. In particular, studies have not assessed the impact of cognitive-behavioral couple therapy as it is conducted in clinical practice. Additional research is needed to address issues such as the relative efficacy of different cognitive restructuring interventions and the impact of integrating interventions targeting cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of relationship problems.