The Effectiveness of Transactional Analysis Group-counseling on the Improvement of Couples’ Family Functioning

Background & Aims of the Study: Family functioning is among the most important factorsensuring the mental health of family members. Disorder or disturbance in familyfunctioning would cause many psychological problems for family members. Current studyintended to examine the effectiveness of transactional analysis group counseling on theimprovement of couple s family functioning.Materials & Methods: The design of the study is as semi experimental research withpretest and posttest with follow up and control group. Statistical population consists of allcouples referring to the psychological and counseling centers of Rasht city in 2012.Samples were selected at first by available sampling method and after completing familyassessment device, and obtaining score for enter to research, were placement using randomsampling method in two experimental and control groups (N = 8 couples per group). Theexperimental group participated in 12 sessions of group counseling based on transactionalanalysis and control group received no intervention. The gathered data were analyzed usingcovariance analysis.Results: The results show that there are significant differences between the pre-test andpost test scores of the experimental group. This difference is significant at the level of 0.05.Therefore it seems that transactional group therapy improved the dimensions of familyfunctioning in couples.Conclusions: The results indicated that transactional analysis group counseling canimprove the family functioning and use this approach to working with couples isrecommended.