German and Italian validation of the Dyadic Coping Inventory-Sexual Minority Stress (DCI-SMS) scale.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals (hereafter people with minoritized sexual orientation and/or gender identities) have limited legal rights and access to resources because of their marginalized status in society. These limitations are associated with notable health disparities and increase experiences of minority stress. For those in a romantic relationship, being able to communicate and cope with one's partner-dyadic coping-can help buffer stress' deleterious effects on well-being. Given the promise of understanding how dyadic coping can mitigate experiences of sexual minority stress, the Dyadic Coping Inventory-Sexual Minority Stress (DCI-SMS) was recently created and validated with those living in the United States to assess how partners cope with sexual minority stress. Answering a global call to expand psychological science beyond a U.S. centric perspective, the purpose of this study was to validate the DCI-SMS in German and Italian using samples from Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, respectively. Confirmatory factor analysis results, along with tests of convergent and discriminant validity, and measurement invariance, suggest that the DCI-SMS is a valid measure of stress communication and dyadic coping behaviors for those in a same-gender relationship in the countries sampled. Important future directions include examining its efficacy in other countries, such as those with more adverse sociopolitical climates for people with minoritized sexual orientation and/or gender identities in a same-gender relationship. Limitations and future directions for research and clinical practice are presented. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Coparenting change after couple therapy using self-reports and observational data.

Parent couples are involved in a coparenting bond and in a romantic relationship. Research on couple therapy has mainly explored the impact of couple therapy on romantic relationships; however, little is known about how couple therapy affects the coparenting relationship. Self-reports of positive and negative coparenting and observed emotional behavior in coparenting-related conversation tasks were assessed pre- and posttherapy (6 months intervals) in 64 mixed-sex parental couples. Results showed that mothers and fathers reported more positive coparenting after therapy. There were no significant changes in the reported negative coparenting and in the emotional behavior. Exploratory analyses indicated gender differences in emotional expression. The findings suggest that fathers might have been more active in the coparenting conversation after therapy.

Couple therapy with parents: Results from a pragmatic randomized controlled trial testing the Integrative Brief Systemic Intervention (IBSI).

This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of the Integrative Brief Systemic Intervention (IBSI), combining therapeutic work on marital and coparenting relationships with brief systemic therapy (BST-as-usual) for parent couples. Couples were randomly assigned to the IBSI (n = 51) or BST (n = 50). Both treatments were six-session interventions and lasted about 6 months. Questionnaires on individual, marital, coparenting and family-related functioning were completed before and after therapy, and at 6-month follow-up. A significant improvement in all areas of functioning was observed after treatment and maintained at follow-up for both IBSI and BST-as-usual treatments. No significant differences in outcomes were found between the treatments. Additionally, women reported more distress overall than men, and this distress was reduced more significantly after therapy. Last, BST-as-usual couples requested more additional sessions compared to IBSI couples. This study extends the literature on couple therapy with parents.

Affective Behavior in Parent Couples Undergoing Couple Therapy: Contrasting Case Studies.

Being in a romantic relationship is characterized by a high degree of intimacy and affective involvement. Affective behavior indicates the emotional content in couple interactions and therefore promotes an understanding of the evolution of romantic relationships. When couples are also parents, their affective behavior reflects their romantic and coparental bonds. In this paper, we present an observation of parent couples' affective behavior during a coparenting conflict discussion task to document whether and how much it improved during couple therapy. Two contrasting cases of affective behavior change are included. Observational coding of affective behavior within pre- and post-intervention coparenting conflict discussion tasks was carried out to compute means and CIs for each partner in both cases. In addition, the partners' coparental and romantic satisfaction were evaluated through validated self-report questionnaires in pre- and post-intervention assessments; this helped document whether the partners' coparental and romantic satisfaction were dissimilar between the two cases. Finally, a clinical analysis of both cases was realized with the contribution of the therapists to investigate possible differences within therapy sessions. Statistical analyses revealed negative means of affective behavior for couple A in the pre-intervention assessment and positive means in the post-intervention assessment. Partners from couple B had negative means of affective behavior in the pre- and post-intervention assessments. Results concerning coparental and romantic satisfaction differed: Couple A's coparental satisfaction slightly increased and the romantic satisfaction somewhat decreased, whereas couple B's coparental satisfaction remained stable and the romantic satisfaction slightly increased between the pre- and post-intervention assessments. The clinical analysis revealed that the interactional quality of couple A slightly improved within therapy sessions and that both partners succeeded in working together as coparents, notwithstanding their romantic distress. Couple B conveyed coparental distress and exhibited poor interactional quality throughout therapy sessions (e.g., repeated criticism and contempt). This study contributes to enriching the more traditional empirical research methods in the field of couple psychotherapy, as it takes into account microlevel affective changes within parent couples' interactions in addition to self-reported data. Furthermore, the analysis of therapy sessions supports the importance of working with affective behavior in couple therapy.