A recent study done by two Alliant faculty members suggests government funding for relationship counseling will ultimately save taxpayers money through reduced divorce rates.
The study, results of which were published in the July issue of the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, also suggests that marital therapy, when paid for by insurers, will offset the increased health care expenses associated with divorce.
The study “Preliminary Estimates of Cost-Effectiveness for Marital Therapy,” is Co-Authored by Benjamin E. Caldwell and Scott R. Woolley of Alliant International University and Casey J. Caldwell of Arizona State University.
“I have been looking for quite a while at the effectiveness of marital therapy and the research on that,” said Dr. Caldwell, Assistant Program Director for Alliant's Marital and Family Therapy (MFT) program in Sacramento. “Our field has been steadily improving. Our techniques are getting more effective as we do more and better research.”
The study began with a simple question: If the government or health insurers paid for the screening and treatment of 100,000 randomly selected heterosexual married persons (50,000 couples) from the general population, would the financial benefits outweigh the costs? The study considered two types of therapy, behavioral marital therapy (BMT) and emotionally focused therapy (EFT). Both are popular techniques that have been the subject of many MFT studies.
“This is a projective study, a hypothetical study,” said Caldwell. “We wanted to ask the question: What would happen if...”
What would happen, according to the study, is that, “for every $1 spent on the screening and treatment of marital distress, the government would receive a return of up to $1.85 in reduced costs of handling divorces. Government would experience a net savings even if only 16% of couples identified as distressed in the screening process went on to begin treatment.”
The study also found that health insurers would benefit financially from decreased divorce rates resulting from MFT. Married people tend to take better care of themselves physically than single people of the same age, and health care costs go down significantly following marital therapy. The study concluded that health insurers could receive a return of up to $1.20 in reduced health-care expenses for every $1 spent on screening and treating marital distress. Even if only 41% of couples identified as distressed during screening went on to begin treatment, health insurers would still save money.
Another cost-saving technique the study proposes is the use of paraprofessional-non-licensed bachelor-level employee- to screen candidates for therapy. The paraprofessional would not treat the patient, but would screen him/her for therapy eligibility. Doing this via phone or internet would reduce the approximately $80/hour screening fee, a number determined by a 2004 survey of California MFT's. This hourly rate, when applied to the studies 100,000 married persons (or 50,000 couples) amounts to $4,000,000, a number that “could be considerably lowered if it were done by paraprofessional, via phone or Internet,” according to the study.
Marital and family therapy is a relatively young field, with recent studies, like this one, helping to bolster its legitimacy and defend its effectiveness.