| Abstract Interfaith couples are a distinctive population that is typically overlooked by the field of clinical psychology (McCormack, 2004). The number of interfaith couples is growing in the United States and they face unique problems. This dissertation will put forth the existing research on interfaith couples, before presenting the research on using acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) with couples. ACT has some spiritual roots in Zen Buddhism (Tan, 2013) and a particular focus on a values-guided life (Hayes, 2012). For these reasons and more, we hypothesize that, theoretically, ACT would be a very good fit for this distinctive population. The principles of ACT will be presented along with guidelines for use with interfaith couples. This paper then concludes by outlining how future research is needed on interfaith couples as a group but also on using ACT specifically with this population. |
