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Objectives: The purpose of the present study was to study the effects of hope-oriented group-couple- therapy on the increase of marital satisfaction among wives with addicted husbands.

Methods: The design of study was quasi-experimental with pre-test, post-test and a control group. Population of the study included all wives with addicted husbands who volunteered to participate in the hope-oriented group couple-therapy sessions, held in 2010 at Residential and Rehabilitatory Place of Aftab Population. Sampling was achieved through random selection which assigned 6 couples in the experiment and six couples in the control groups. Enrich marital satisfaction-short form was the instrument utilized in the study consistency coefficient for the questionnaire was calculated at 0.091 by Asgari & Bahmani (2010). Hope-oriented group-couple-therapy sessions involved a pre-session and 8 main sessions which were held once a week, each 1.5 hour to hold these sessions practical instructions on hope therapy, as suggested by Snyder et al. & Verthington (cited in Bahari, 2010) were utilized. Data analysis was conducted by SPSS using descriptive statistics methods (drawing tables, depiction of diagrams and using mean and standard deviation for the study variables) and inferential statistics methods (including Colmogrov-Smirnov test, t-test for independent groups, Lewin test, Q-Square test and co-variance test).

Results: Results of covariance analysis revealed hope-oriented group-couple-therapy intervention could significantly increase marital satisfaction among couples of the experimental group as compared to the control group.

Discussion: To summarize, this study showed the effects of using couple therapy, the advantages of group therapy, the advantages of adopting a hope-oriented approach and the benefits of making use of multiple therapeutic methods (such as cognitive-behavioral, problem-oriented, motivational and narrative therapies).