Faeghe Ghanami - M.A. in Clinical Psychology, Department of Semnan National University, Semnan, Iran
Roya Arefian - M.A. in Clinical Psychology, Department of Shahrood Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrood, Iran

Purpose: substance use disorder is one of the major problems of present era that the number of victims is increasing every day. The substance use disorder has bad effect not only on addict's life, but also has several damages on his or her friends, relatives and family. Hence, the purpose of the present research was to study the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral stress management training on perceived stress from partners of victims who are suffering from substance use disorder.Methods: This is an Experimental research with pre-test and post-test and it was done by following up the Control group. The statistical community of this research includes 30 partners of victims who were suffering from substance use disorder. They have been selected randomly and have been placed in two groups of Experimental (15) and Control (15) group. To collect data, perceived stress scale of Cohen has been used.Findings: cognitive-behavioral stress management has been conducted on Experimental group during 10 sessions. Findings have been analyzed in two levels of descriptive and inferential statistics (single variable and multi variable covariance). The result of data analysis indicate that researcher's hypothesis on the effectiveness of group stress management based on cognitive-behavioral approach has been confirmed in order to reduce the perceived stress (p<0.05).Conclusion: the results indicate that group stress management training based on cognitive-behavioral approach reduces the level of stress in people who are experiencing challenges and significant mental pressure because of substance use disorder of one of their family members by creating efficient attitudes toward current stressful situations, and also by training to create pleasure behavioral reactions in stressful situations.

stress management, cognitive-behavioral approach, perceived stress, partners, and substance use disorder