Calling For Counseling Programs That Enhance the Communication Skill Between Spouses A Study at UoB Warns of The Psychological and Organic Effects of Marital Silence

Sakhir – University of Bahrain (Ali Al-Sabbaq)

5 April 2023

A study at the University of Bahrain (UoB) called for designing marital and family counseling programs to educate spouses on the importance of communication skill, for its great role in establishing a successful marital relationship, which reflects positively on the psychological state of spouses and the family in general.

This came within the recommendations of a thesis presented by the researcher in the Master’s in Family Counseling Program at the College of Arts at UoB, Nada Nasim Abdulrahman, who researched “Marital Silence and Its Relation to Psychosomatic Disorders Among Spouses in the Kingdom of Bahrain.”

The researcher defined marital silence as the absence of dialogue between the spouses, and the absence of communication between the two parties due to silence prevailing over the family atmosphere, which reveals the unwillingness to enhance communication between the two parties and leads to a state of indifference that threatens the family entity.

In addition, she pointed out that psychosomatic disorder is a psychological term that refers to a change in the physical state resulting from chronic emotional disorders, due to the changing characteristics of the patient’s life, where a long physical therapy alone does not succeed in their complete recovery, due to the persistence of emotional imbalance.

An examination committee discussed the student Abdulrahman’s thesis, and it consisted of: Associate Professor of Psychology at the College of Arts at UoB, Dr. Mohammed Hassan Al-Mutawa, as the supervisor, Associate Professor of Psychology at the same university, Dr. Ahmed Saad Jalal, as an internal examiner, and Professor of Psychology at the University of Alexandria, Professor Dr. Ashraf Abdulghani Shareet is an external examiner.

The study applied the comparative descriptive approach and the semi-experimental approach, and it found that there is a positive relationship between marital silence and psychosomatic disorders.

Moreover, the researcher stressed that the findings confirm the importance of not ignoring sensitive marital issues, such as marital silence, as the large accumulation of issues on spouses creates a state of frustration and fatigue that become diseases that affect the body, and whose origin is psychological.

Regarding the reasons leading to marital silence, the researcher explained that some of them are related to the complexity of life and its requirements and the abundance of material pressures and burdens, while some of them are related to psychological motives, such as: marital disturbance between some couples, and the frequent occurrence of marital disputes, due to the personality of the spouses that was formed in the shadow of families who had a lot of arguing and problems, in addition to technological causes such as the spouses focusing on social media, telephones, and television, and not making the marital relationship a priority, which leads to the absence of dialogue.