Marriage education for clinicians.

The field of marriage education has come to be dominated by nonprofessionals with no clinical training because clinicians interested in relationships typically provide marital therapy to couples in distress rather than marriage education to healthy couples. In this paper, we encourage clinicians to participate in the development of marriage education programs, such as that described by our Supporting Healthy Marriage program, which serves a large number of low-income couples, and propose a psychological conceptual framework for delivering marriage education services. It makes sense for clinicians to consider using this novel approach given the opportunity to impact such a large segment of society that might not receive psychological services.

Widening spheres of impact: the role of forgiveness in marital and family functioning.

This study examined relations between aspects of family functioning and positive and negative dimensions of forgiveness. Increased understanding of one's partner and decreased anger about betrayal characterize positive forgiveness, whereas experiences such as holding a grudge and desiring revenge indicate negative forgiveness. The sample included 87 wives and 74 husbands who reported experiencing a significant betrayal, their partners, and their adolescent children. Analyses of reported forgiveness revealed that more negative forgiveness was associated with lower marital satisfaction for husbands and wives; trust partially mediated this relationship for husbands and wives. Greater positive forgiveness reported by husbands and wives predicted their own reports of a stronger parenting alliance, whereas greater negative forgiveness reported by husbands and wives predicted their spouses' reports of a weaker parenting alliance. For wives, more negative forgiveness also predicted higher levels of children's perceived parental conflict, and parents' reported conflict mediated this association for wives. Findings suggest that forgiveness of a marital betrayal is significantly associated with marital satisfaction, the parenting alliance, and children's perceptions of parental marital functioning.

School-based prevention of depressive symptoms: A randomized controlled study of the effectiveness and specificity of the Penn Resiliency Program.

The authors investigated the effectiveness and specificity of the Penn Resiliency Program (PRP; J. E. Gillham, L. H. Jaycox, K. J. Reivich, M. E. P. Seligman, & T. Silver, 1990), a cognitive-behavioral depression prevention program. Children (N = 697) from 3 middle schools were randomly assigned to PRP, Control (CON), or the Penn Enhancement Program (PEP; K. J. Reivich, 1996; A. J. Shatté, 1997), an alternate intervention that controls for nonspecific intervention ingredients. Children's depressive symptoms were assessed through 3 years of follow-up. There was no intervention effect on average levels of depressive symptoms in the full sample. Findings varied by school. In 2 schools, PRP significantly reduced depressive symptoms across the follow-up relative to both CON and PEP. In the 3rd school, PRP did not prevent depressive symptoms. The authors discuss the findings in relation to previous research on PRP and the dissemination of prevention programs.

Exploring relationships among communication, sexual satisfaction, and marital satisfaction.

This study examined relationships among couple communication, sexual satisfaction, and marital satisfaction in 387 married couples. Regression analyses demonstrated that communication and sexual satisfaction independently predict marital satisfaction. However, there is a significant interaction between communication and sexual satisfaction; if couples are successful at communicating constructively, sexual satisfaction fails to contribute to marital satisfaction. Alternatively, if couples have difficulty communicating but are sexually satisfied, they will experience greater marital satisfaction than if they have a less satisfying sexual relationship. Thus, sexual satisfaction may partially compensate for the negative effects of poor communication on marital satisfaction.