Donald Baucom | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (original) (raw)

Papers by Donald Baucom

Family Process, 2021

Despite comparable levels of relationship satisfaction and intimacy, same‐sex couples break up fa... more Despite comparable levels of relationship satisfaction and intimacy, same‐sex couples break up faster and more often than different‐sex couples, highlighting a need for quality couple therapy. Research suggests that culturally tailored services are desired by same‐sex couples and may be more effective and better received. Although efficacious couple therapies exist to treat relationship distress, they have been overwhelmingly studied with different‐sex couples. Sexual minority (SM) affirming couple therapies have not been systematically developed or evaluated. The current study involved developing and pilot testing a couple therapy tailored for distressed same‐sex female couples. This treatment integrates the SM stress model with the empirically supported cognitive‐behavioral couple therapy framework and is the first culturally tailored couple therapy for same‐sex couples to be empirically evaluated. Therapists delivered the treatment in an open‐trial format to a pilot sample of 11 ...

American Psychological Association eBooks, 2020

Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 2011

Context. Lung cancer is one of the most common cancers in the United States and is associated wit... more Context. Lung cancer is one of the most common cancers in the United States and is associated with high levels of symptoms, including pain, fatigue, shortness of breath, and psychological distress. Caregivers and patients are adversely affected. However, previous studies of coping skills training (CST) interventions have not been tested in patients with lung cancer nor have systematically included caregivers. Objectives. This study tested the efficacy of a caregiver-assisted CST protocol in a sample of patients with lung cancer. Methods. Two hundred thirty-three lung cancer patients and their caregivers were randomly assigned to receive 14 telephone-based sessions of either caregiver-assisted CST or education/support involving the caregiver. Patients completed measures assessing pain, psychological distress, quality of life (QOL), and self-efficacy for symptom management; caregivers completed measures assessing psychological distress, caregiver strain, and self-efficacy for helping the patient manage symptoms. Results. Patients in both treatment conditions showed improvements in pain, depression, QOL, and self-efficacy, and caregivers in both conditions showed improvements in anxiety and self-efficacy from baseline to four-month follow-up. Results of exploratory analyses suggested that the CST intervention was more beneficial to patients/caregivers with Stage II and III cancers, whereas the education/support intervention was more beneficial to patients/caregivers with Stage I cancer. Conclusion. Taken together with the broader literature in this area, results from this study suggest that psychosocial interventions can lead to improvements in a range of outcomes for cancer patients. Suggestions for future studies include the use of three-group designs (e.g., comparing two active interventions with a standard-care control) and examining mechanisms of

International Journal of Sexual Health, Oct 2, 2018

Objectives: Couple-based HIV prevention efforts are an important HIV prevention strategy in South... more Objectives: Couple-based HIV prevention efforts are an important HIV prevention strategy in South Africa but there is a lack of understanding as to what constitutes healthy relationships in South African sociodisadvantaged communities. Methods: To address this, 8 focus group discussions were conducted with 27 men and 23 Black African women living in a large disadvantaged community in Cape Town, South Africa. Results: A model of adaptive relationship functioning is put forth, which involves four primary relationship components that emerged as central to healthy relationships: active relationship building, emotional support/display, communication, and problem-solving. Conclusions: The results of this study can inform couple-based HIV prevention efforts.

Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Nov 1, 2019

The goal of our study was to provide qualitative data on the long-term effects of a couple-based ... more The goal of our study was to provide qualitative data on the long-term effects of a couple-based HIV prevention program, the Couples Health CoOp (CHC), in South Africa. Qualitative focus group discussions were conducted with nonrandomly selected Black South African men (n 5 27) and women (n 5 23) who had participated in the Couples Health CoOp 4 to 6 years prior to our study. The study evaluated: (a) salient content and skills learned, (b) long-term changes and challenges, and (c) recommendations for intervention improvement. Findings revealed (a) communication/problem-solving, safe sexual behaviors, and negative effects of alcohol were most salient; (b) long-term changes occurred in communication and healthier sexual behavior; alcohol use remained challenging; and (c) participants recommended continuing the couple format and suggested targeting teenage couples. We offer preliminary evidence of the strengths and weaknesses of the Couples Health CoOp and provide a basis for future studies to build on these results.

Family Process, Aug 25, 2015

Whereas most couples enter into marriage or similar committed, romantic relationships with the fu... more Whereas most couples enter into marriage or similar committed, romantic relationships with the full expectation that they will live their lives together in a happy and rewarding manner, the divorce rate in the United States and many Western countries continues to be alarmingly high—in the United States hovering around 50%. As a result, mental health practitioners have focused energy on ways to alleviate relationship distress. Many approaches for assisting distressed couples have been developed, yet few have been evaluated to demonstrate that they actually help couples. The current chapter provides an overview of the major models of couple therapy that have been evaluated in well-controlled research studies and have demonstrated that they benefit couples. The models included are: behavioral couple therapy, cognitive-behavioral couple therapy, integrative behavioral couple therapy, emotionally focused couple therapy, and insight-oriented couple therapy. For each model, the theoretical approach, overall interventions, and effectiveness are discussed.

Behaviour Research and Therapy, Jun 1, 2013

Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), 2017

Impaired emotion regulation and maladaptive strategies to manage distress are central to psychopa... more Impaired emotion regulation and maladaptive strategies to manage distress are central to psychopathology, including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anorexia nervosa (AN). Emotion regulation can be fostered or thwarted by romantic partners, and the tendency to rely on interpersonally oriented emotion regulation may vary by disorder. This study examined coregulation as a form of interpersonal emotion regulation in OCD and AN. We hypothesized that OCD is associated with exaggerated and AN with diminished coregulation, and that OCD patients have greater overall levels of emotional arousal than AN patients. Greater symptom severity was expected to exacerbate these opposing tendencies. Vocally encoded emotional arousal was measured during couple conversations in 34 AN patients, 18 OCD patients, and their partners. Two indicators of coregulation (covariation and coupling) were analyzed using cross-lagged actor-partner interdependence and coupled linear oscillator models. As hypothesized, OCD was associated with greater overall emotional arousal than AN. Symptom severity was not associated with emotional arousal or coregulation. Covariation differed in the opposite direction of the hypothesis; there was no difference in coupling. AN patients exhibited consistent coregulation, indicating high reactivity to partners' emotional arousal which may contribute to interpersonal avoidance. OCD couples showed limited predictability of patients' arousal over time, while partners were affected by the patients' emotional arousal; thus, symptom accommodation may in part be partners' attempts at managing their own distress along with the patients'. A better understanding of interpersonal emotion regulation in OCD and AN can inform treatment by targeting interaction patterns that may maintain symptoms.

Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, Psychologie und Psychotherapie, Sep 1, 2020

Zusammenfassung. Dieser Artikel gibt einen Uberblick uber die Wirksamkeit paarbasierter kognitiv-... more Zusammenfassung. Dieser Artikel gibt einen Uberblick uber die Wirksamkeit paarbasierter kognitiv-verhaltenstherapeutischer Psychotherapie bei psychischen Storungen. In den vergangenen zwei Jahrzehn...

Journal of Family Psychology, 2003

This longitudinal study predicted marital outcome from communication skills gained from participa... more This longitudinal study predicted marital outcome from communication skills gained from participation in the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP; H. J. Markman, S. L. Blumberg & S. M. Stanley, 1989; Stanley et al., 2001) by 39 women and 38 men. Results were in the expected direction for men but not for women. Men's pre- to posttest decrease in negative communication and increase in positive communication predicted decreased risk of marital distress onset in men. Women's pre- to posttest increase in positive communication, which was related to self-reported avoidance of problem solving, predicted an increased risk of male and female distress onset. Couples with men relatively high on premarital risk factors demonstrated a greater benefit from men's positive communication skills acquisition.

Couple and Family Psychology, Mar 21, 2022

Journal of Family Therapy, Jul 9, 2012

Relationship functioning and psychopathology are strongly associated with one another. In this ar... more Relationship functioning and psychopathology are strongly associated with one another. In this article we provide a selective review of the literature on relationship discord and the presence, incidence and individual‐based treatment of psychiatric disorders. We then present a model for conceptualizing couple‐based interventions with couples in which one partner has a psychiatric disorder, distinguishing between partner‐assisted interventions, disorder‐specific interventions and couple therapy interventions. Finally, we provide examples of how to employ these interventions with several psychiatric disorders (obsessive‐compulsive disorder, anorexia nervosa and depression) and selectively review the efficacy of couple‐based interventions in the treatment of psychopathology.

Prevention & Treatment, 2000

ABSTRACT Reanalyzed the data from the following studies evaluating the effectiveness of behaviora... more ABSTRACT Reanalyzed the data from the following studies evaluating the effectiveness of behavioral marital therapy to see what proportion of couples improved and how many join the ranks of happily married couples: D. H. Baucom (see record 1982-21665-001), K. Hahlweg et al (see record 1983-26163-001), N. S. Jacobson (see record 1984-21130-001), and G. Margolin and R. L. Wiess (see record 1979-26577-001). Data on 148 couples showed that slightly more than half improved and deterioration was rare. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, Dec 1, 2014

Background and objectives: This study investigated the effect of a couple-based cognitive behavio... more Background and objectives: This study investigated the effect of a couple-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) on the intimate partners of patients. Previous research has shown this intervention to be efficacious in reducing OCD symptoms and comorbidities in patients. Method: In an open-treatment trial, 16 couples completed the 16-session manualized treatment, and were followed up 6-and 12-months post-treatment. Results: Multilevel modeling analyses were conducted to examine change over time, and results indicated that relative to baseline, partners showed improvements in relationship functioning, communication, and criticalness in the short-term, and maintained their gains in communication skills over the long-term. Limitations: The non-controlled design and small sample size limit the certainty of the study's findings. Conclusions: Overall, this investigation offers preliminary evidence that including intimate partners in couple-based CBT for OCD has no negative effects on partners, and in fact, can provide them with residual positive effects.

Behavior Modification, May 22, 2012

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jun 11, 2018

American Psychological Association eBooks, 2019

Family Process, 2021

Despite comparable levels of relationship satisfaction and intimacy, same‐sex couples break up fa... more Despite comparable levels of relationship satisfaction and intimacy, same‐sex couples break up faster and more often than different‐sex couples, highlighting a need for quality couple therapy. Research suggests that culturally tailored services are desired by same‐sex couples and may be more effective and better received. Although efficacious couple therapies exist to treat relationship distress, they have been overwhelmingly studied with different‐sex couples. Sexual minority (SM) affirming couple therapies have not been systematically developed or evaluated. The current study involved developing and pilot testing a couple therapy tailored for distressed same‐sex female couples. This treatment integrates the SM stress model with the empirically supported cognitive‐behavioral couple therapy framework and is the first culturally tailored couple therapy for same‐sex couples to be empirically evaluated. Therapists delivered the treatment in an open‐trial format to a pilot sample of 11 ...

American Psychological Association eBooks, 2020

Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 2011

Context. Lung cancer is one of the most common cancers in the United States and is associated wit... more Context. Lung cancer is one of the most common cancers in the United States and is associated with high levels of symptoms, including pain, fatigue, shortness of breath, and psychological distress. Caregivers and patients are adversely affected. However, previous studies of coping skills training (CST) interventions have not been tested in patients with lung cancer nor have systematically included caregivers. Objectives. This study tested the efficacy of a caregiver-assisted CST protocol in a sample of patients with lung cancer. Methods. Two hundred thirty-three lung cancer patients and their caregivers were randomly assigned to receive 14 telephone-based sessions of either caregiver-assisted CST or education/support involving the caregiver. Patients completed measures assessing pain, psychological distress, quality of life (QOL), and self-efficacy for symptom management; caregivers completed measures assessing psychological distress, caregiver strain, and self-efficacy for helping the patient manage symptoms. Results. Patients in both treatment conditions showed improvements in pain, depression, QOL, and self-efficacy, and caregivers in both conditions showed improvements in anxiety and self-efficacy from baseline to four-month follow-up. Results of exploratory analyses suggested that the CST intervention was more beneficial to patients/caregivers with Stage II and III cancers, whereas the education/support intervention was more beneficial to patients/caregivers with Stage I cancer. Conclusion. Taken together with the broader literature in this area, results from this study suggest that psychosocial interventions can lead to improvements in a range of outcomes for cancer patients. Suggestions for future studies include the use of three-group designs (e.g., comparing two active interventions with a standard-care control) and examining mechanisms of

International Journal of Sexual Health, Oct 2, 2018

Objectives: Couple-based HIV prevention efforts are an important HIV prevention strategy in South... more Objectives: Couple-based HIV prevention efforts are an important HIV prevention strategy in South Africa but there is a lack of understanding as to what constitutes healthy relationships in South African sociodisadvantaged communities. Methods: To address this, 8 focus group discussions were conducted with 27 men and 23 Black African women living in a large disadvantaged community in Cape Town, South Africa. Results: A model of adaptive relationship functioning is put forth, which involves four primary relationship components that emerged as central to healthy relationships: active relationship building, emotional support/display, communication, and problem-solving. Conclusions: The results of this study can inform couple-based HIV prevention efforts.

Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Nov 1, 2019

The goal of our study was to provide qualitative data on the long-term effects of a couple-based ... more The goal of our study was to provide qualitative data on the long-term effects of a couple-based HIV prevention program, the Couples Health CoOp (CHC), in South Africa. Qualitative focus group discussions were conducted with nonrandomly selected Black South African men (n 5 27) and women (n 5 23) who had participated in the Couples Health CoOp 4 to 6 years prior to our study. The study evaluated: (a) salient content and skills learned, (b) long-term changes and challenges, and (c) recommendations for intervention improvement. Findings revealed (a) communication/problem-solving, safe sexual behaviors, and negative effects of alcohol were most salient; (b) long-term changes occurred in communication and healthier sexual behavior; alcohol use remained challenging; and (c) participants recommended continuing the couple format and suggested targeting teenage couples. We offer preliminary evidence of the strengths and weaknesses of the Couples Health CoOp and provide a basis for future studies to build on these results.

Family Process, Aug 25, 2015

Whereas most couples enter into marriage or similar committed, romantic relationships with the fu... more Whereas most couples enter into marriage or similar committed, romantic relationships with the full expectation that they will live their lives together in a happy and rewarding manner, the divorce rate in the United States and many Western countries continues to be alarmingly high—in the United States hovering around 50%. As a result, mental health practitioners have focused energy on ways to alleviate relationship distress. Many approaches for assisting distressed couples have been developed, yet few have been evaluated to demonstrate that they actually help couples. The current chapter provides an overview of the major models of couple therapy that have been evaluated in well-controlled research studies and have demonstrated that they benefit couples. The models included are: behavioral couple therapy, cognitive-behavioral couple therapy, integrative behavioral couple therapy, emotionally focused couple therapy, and insight-oriented couple therapy. For each model, the theoretical approach, overall interventions, and effectiveness are discussed.

Behaviour Research and Therapy, Jun 1, 2013

Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), 2017

Impaired emotion regulation and maladaptive strategies to manage distress are central to psychopa... more Impaired emotion regulation and maladaptive strategies to manage distress are central to psychopathology, including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anorexia nervosa (AN). Emotion regulation can be fostered or thwarted by romantic partners, and the tendency to rely on interpersonally oriented emotion regulation may vary by disorder. This study examined coregulation as a form of interpersonal emotion regulation in OCD and AN. We hypothesized that OCD is associated with exaggerated and AN with diminished coregulation, and that OCD patients have greater overall levels of emotional arousal than AN patients. Greater symptom severity was expected to exacerbate these opposing tendencies. Vocally encoded emotional arousal was measured during couple conversations in 34 AN patients, 18 OCD patients, and their partners. Two indicators of coregulation (covariation and coupling) were analyzed using cross-lagged actor-partner interdependence and coupled linear oscillator models. As hypothesized, OCD was associated with greater overall emotional arousal than AN. Symptom severity was not associated with emotional arousal or coregulation. Covariation differed in the opposite direction of the hypothesis; there was no difference in coupling. AN patients exhibited consistent coregulation, indicating high reactivity to partners' emotional arousal which may contribute to interpersonal avoidance. OCD couples showed limited predictability of patients' arousal over time, while partners were affected by the patients' emotional arousal; thus, symptom accommodation may in part be partners' attempts at managing their own distress along with the patients'. A better understanding of interpersonal emotion regulation in OCD and AN can inform treatment by targeting interaction patterns that may maintain symptoms.

Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, Psychologie und Psychotherapie, Sep 1, 2020

Zusammenfassung. Dieser Artikel gibt einen Uberblick uber die Wirksamkeit paarbasierter kognitiv-... more Zusammenfassung. Dieser Artikel gibt einen Uberblick uber die Wirksamkeit paarbasierter kognitiv-verhaltenstherapeutischer Psychotherapie bei psychischen Storungen. In den vergangenen zwei Jahrzehn...

Journal of Family Psychology, 2003

This longitudinal study predicted marital outcome from communication skills gained from participa... more This longitudinal study predicted marital outcome from communication skills gained from participation in the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP; H. J. Markman, S. L. Blumberg & S. M. Stanley, 1989; Stanley et al., 2001) by 39 women and 38 men. Results were in the expected direction for men but not for women. Men's pre- to posttest decrease in negative communication and increase in positive communication predicted decreased risk of marital distress onset in men. Women's pre- to posttest increase in positive communication, which was related to self-reported avoidance of problem solving, predicted an increased risk of male and female distress onset. Couples with men relatively high on premarital risk factors demonstrated a greater benefit from men's positive communication skills acquisition.

Couple and Family Psychology, Mar 21, 2022

Journal of Family Therapy, Jul 9, 2012

Relationship functioning and psychopathology are strongly associated with one another. In this ar... more Relationship functioning and psychopathology are strongly associated with one another. In this article we provide a selective review of the literature on relationship discord and the presence, incidence and individual‐based treatment of psychiatric disorders. We then present a model for conceptualizing couple‐based interventions with couples in which one partner has a psychiatric disorder, distinguishing between partner‐assisted interventions, disorder‐specific interventions and couple therapy interventions. Finally, we provide examples of how to employ these interventions with several psychiatric disorders (obsessive‐compulsive disorder, anorexia nervosa and depression) and selectively review the efficacy of couple‐based interventions in the treatment of psychopathology.

Prevention & Treatment, 2000

ABSTRACT Reanalyzed the data from the following studies evaluating the effectiveness of behaviora... more ABSTRACT Reanalyzed the data from the following studies evaluating the effectiveness of behavioral marital therapy to see what proportion of couples improved and how many join the ranks of happily married couples: D. H. Baucom (see record 1982-21665-001), K. Hahlweg et al (see record 1983-26163-001), N. S. Jacobson (see record 1984-21130-001), and G. Margolin and R. L. Wiess (see record 1979-26577-001). Data on 148 couples showed that slightly more than half improved and deterioration was rare. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, Dec 1, 2014

Background and objectives: This study investigated the effect of a couple-based cognitive behavio... more Background and objectives: This study investigated the effect of a couple-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) on the intimate partners of patients. Previous research has shown this intervention to be efficacious in reducing OCD symptoms and comorbidities in patients. Method: In an open-treatment trial, 16 couples completed the 16-session manualized treatment, and were followed up 6-and 12-months post-treatment. Results: Multilevel modeling analyses were conducted to examine change over time, and results indicated that relative to baseline, partners showed improvements in relationship functioning, communication, and criticalness in the short-term, and maintained their gains in communication skills over the long-term. Limitations: The non-controlled design and small sample size limit the certainty of the study's findings. Conclusions: Overall, this investigation offers preliminary evidence that including intimate partners in couple-based CBT for OCD has no negative effects on partners, and in fact, can provide them with residual positive effects.

Behavior Modification, May 22, 2012

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jun 11, 2018

American Psychological Association eBooks, 2019