Efficacy of positive cognitive intervention programon psychological distress among wives of alcoholics

Pages:418-422
John Silvy and Marie Ann S. Vargas (The Graduate School, University of Santo Tomas, España, Manila, Philippines)

The purpose of the study was to investigate the efficacy of the newly developed integrated positive psychological intervention program called ‘Positive Cognitive Intervention (PCI)’ in reducing psychological distress among the wives of alcoholics. Various stressful experiences and behavioral problems from the part of the alcoholic partners cause psychological distress to the wives. The eligible participants for the experimental study were 38 wives of alcoholics. They were randomly allocated into experimental and control groups. The instruments used in this study were i) ‘Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale (DASS-21)’ and ii semi-structured interview. Manova, paired t-test, and Cohen’s d test were utilized for the statistical analysis. The results revealed that PCI program is significantly efficacious in reducing psychological distress (F [1, 36] = 5098.32, p< 0.0005); and in terms of depression (F (1, 36) =1705.91, p =0.000), anxiety (F (1, 36) =1269.85, p =0.000) and stress (F (1, 36) =812.81, p=0.000) among the wives of alcoholics. The t-test showed significant differences (p= 0.000) at 0.05 level in pre and post test results of the experimental group measured by DASS and Cohen's d test revealed the large effect size of the program. The findings of this study reveal that Integrated Positive Psychological Intervention program 'Positive Cognitive Intervention' is an effective program for reducing psychological distress of the wives of alcoholics. The study suggests future research to explore the PCI program in urban population.