COMPARING THE EFFICACY OF RELIGIOUSLY INTEGRATED COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY ON LIFE SATISFACTION AMONG THREE CHRISTIANS DENOMINATIONS IN ANAMBRA, NIGERIA

Authors

  • U I EJIOFO
  • I S URAMA
  • H O OSINOWO

Keywords:

Christians, Denomination, Life satisfaction, & Religiously integrated cognitive behavioural therapy

Abstract

 Religiously Integrated Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has been found to be efficacious in improving levels of life satisfaction among Christians. Whether any particular denomination benefits more than others from the psychotherapy still remains uninvestigated. This study therefore tried to compare the efficacy of religiously integrated cognitive behavioural therapy on life satisfaction among three key denominations in Nigeria: Anglican, Catholic and Pentecostal; hypothesizing that denomination would have significant effect on the efficacy of religiously integrated cognitive behavioural therapy on life satisfaction of Christians.Adopted for the analytical framework of this research was Diener’s theory on life satisfaction. A true-experimental design was used. Thirty Christians from 3 denominations: Anglican (26.7%), Catholic (43.3%) and Pentecostal (30.0%) participated in the study. A multistage sampling technique was adopted in gathering the participants: purposive sampling was used to select the Sea and denominations; accidental sampling was used to select participants therefrom. The ages of the participants ranged from 24 to 62 years with mean age of 38 (SD=8.9). Female constituted 50% of the sample. For data collection, Satisfaction with Life Scale (α=0.80) was used.The results of data analyses using one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) showed that there was significant interaction effect of Christian denomination and religiously integrated cognitive behavioural therapy on life satisfaction (F (2, 22) = 3.93, p < .05, η2partial = .26). Further analyses revealed that the Catholics have higher life satisfaction ( = 22.48) than the Pentecostal (( = 17.58) and the Anglican members (( = 20.95) after exposure to the religiously integrated cognitive behavioural therapy.The study concludes that denomination has effect on the efficacy religiously integrated cognitive behavioural therapy has on Christians’ life satisfaction. The research recommends a denomination-specific religiously integrated cognitive behavioural therapy among Christians. Clinicians, psychotherapists, general mental workers, and religious leaders should be aware of the role denomination plays when using religiously integrated cognitive behavioural therapy in improving the life satisfaction of their clients.  

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Published

2020-04-01

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Vol. 23 No. 1 (2020): AFRICAN JOURNAL FOR THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES OF SOCIAL ISSUES

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