Emotion-focused group counseling with Turkish divorced women: a mixed design study

This study investigates the effect of an emotion-focused group counseling program (EFGCP) on the emotional awareness and psychological well-being of divorced women. It also investigates their opinions regarding its effectiveness. This mixed-method study used a real experimental design with a 2 × 3 pretest–post-test control group with follow-up tests. It administered 16 EFGCP sessions to the experimental group and collected quantitative data from the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale and Psychological Well-being Scale and qualitative data from client and group leader diaries and focus group interview forms. The quantitative data were analyzed using a mixed 2 × 3 repeated-measure analysis of variance, while the qualitative data were examined using content analysis. Quantitative findings showed that EFGCP increased the emotional awareness levels of divorced women in the experimental group compared with those in the control group. This effect continued for 3 months, and while it improved their psychological well-being, the improvement was not significant. Meanwhile, qualitative results were grouped under two categories: “contribution” and “emotion-focused group counseling.” The contribution category included four themes, namely, emotional awareness, psychological well-being, adaptation after divorce, and metaphors. However, the emotion-focused group counseling category included techniques, group leader, and recommendations for group structure themes. Implications for further research and practice are discussed in light of the literature. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.