Couple therapy research affirms that various approaches to couple treatment produce statistically and clinically significant improvement for a substantial proportion of couples in reducing overall relationship distress. Recent studies have extended these findings in indicating the effectiveness of couple-based interventions for a broad range of coexisting emotional, behavioral, or physical heal...

A number of patients of Mediterranean and Asian origins were found to have unexplained microcytic hypochromic red blood cells. Iron deficiency and fl-thalassaemia trait were both satisfactorily excluded in all of them. The haematological indices of these patients, obtained on a Coulter Model 'S' Counter, were found to be very similar to those seen in obligatory heterozygotes for oc-thalassaemia...

AIMS To investigate whether it is worthwhile, in areas where thalassaemia is common, to screen for globin gene mutations in subjects with a mean corpuscular volume (MCV) above 80 fL, especially in partners of known thalassaemia carriers. METHODS Blood samples from 95 subjects with MCV between 80 and 85 fL were screened for the presence of alpha globin gene mutations and the haemoglobin (Hb) E...

This study was done to evaluate the efficiency of M/H ratio between the percentages of microcytic and hypochromic cells as a screening procedure for thalassaemia trait in Pakistani population. A total of 150 subjects, were included in this study. The analysis of results revealed that M/H ratio is a very sensitive index for beta thalassaemia trait. The sensitivity, predictive value and diagnosti...

Though it is clear from meta-analytic research that couple therapy works well, it is less clear how couple therapy works. Efforts to attribute change to the unique ingredients of a particular model have consistently turned up short, leading many researchers to suggest that change is due to common factors that run through different treatment approaches and settings. The purpose of this article i...

In this article, we propose the vulnerability cycle as a construct for understanding and working with couples' impasses. We expand the interactional concept of couples' reciprocal patterns to include behavioral and subjective dimensions, and articulate specific processes that trigger and maintain couples' entanglements. We consider the vulnerability cycle as a nexus of integration in which "vul...

This article describes an innovative model of couples therapy designed to mitigate marital instability. The authors suggest that combining ongoing couples therapy with a separate relationship-focused group for each partner favorably impacts each person's neuropsychophysiological regulation and their ability to participate in a stable intimate marriage. The neurobiology of attachment theory is s...

OBJECTIVE To screen immediate family members of thalassaemia patients for carrier identification and counselling. METHODS The cross-sectional study was conducted at an urban thalassaemia treatment and prevention centre in Karachi, Pakistan, from January to December 2008, and involved 188 siblings of 100 thalassaemia patients. Complete blood count, including haemogram, was performed in the sib...

In this article, we review the major conceptual and clinical influences and trends in the history of couple therapy to date, and also chronicle the history of research on couple therapy. The evolving patterns in theory and practice are reviewed as having progressed through four distinctive phases: Phase I--Atheoretical Marriage Counseling Formation (1930-1963); Phase II--Psychoanalytic Experime...

An ability to form and develop a collaborative alliance with each partner and to enlist their support for relationship-focused therapy, for example by: responding empathically in order to validate the experience of each partner, especially their emotional experience accepting and exploring each partner’s reservations about engaging in couple therapy gauging when and whether separate sessions ar...