The Online OurRelationship Program for Relationally Distressed Individuals: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Digital Health

Background:

• Relationship distress negatively impacts mental, physical health, and quality of life.
• Barriers to couple-based interventions include time constraints and participant refusal.
• In-person individual relationship interventions face reach limitations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the efficacy of a fully web-based relationship intervention for individuals (OR-I).
• To adapt the successful couple-based OurRelationship program (OR-C) for individual, online delivery.
• To assess improvements in quality of life, functioning, and health outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Pilot study utilizing a randomized controlled trial design.
• Participants were assigned to either the OurRelationship-Individual (OR-I) program or a waitlist control group.
• Outcomes measured included quality of life, work functioning, perceived health, relationship functioning, depression, and anxiety.

Main Results:

• The OR-I group showed significant improvements in quality of life, work functioning, and perceived health compared to the control group.
• Gains in quality of life and perceived health were maintained at short-term follow-up.
• No significant improvements were observed in relationship functioning, depression, or anxiety symptoms.

Conclusions:

• The web-based individual relationship intervention (OR-I) shows promise as a viable option for accessible relationship support.
• OR-I demonstrated comparable efficacy to the in-person couple-based program (OR-C) in terms of outcome changes.
• Further research is needed to explore adaptations and long-term effectiveness.