Get Better Together: Relationship Education For Military Couples

Summary

This study is testing a program called Get Better Together, a relationship education program designed to help military couples effectively navigate life stressors as a team. The goal is to find out if attending Get Better Together improves mental health and relationship skills, and reduces problems like alcohol misuse, aggression, and suicide risk. Couples who join the study will be randomly placed into one of two groups. One group will attend Get Better Together at a weekend retreat. The other group will continue their usual activities and later receive access to an online relationship education program. All participants will complete surveys before the retreat and again 2, 4, and 6 months later.

Conditions

• Emotion Regulation
• Relationship Conflict
• Suicide Risk
• Alcohol Use
• Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)
• Relationship Distress
• Interpersonal Emotion Regulation

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Get Better Together (GBT)

Get Better Together is a couple-based, primary prevention program designed to reduce risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors, problematic alcohol use, and intimate partner violence by addressing two transdiagnostic drivers: emotion dysregulation and relationship conflict. The intervention is an adaptation of the empirically supported Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP), modified in collaboration with military stakeholders to meet the unique cultural and contextual needs of military couples. The GBT curriculum includes approximately 10 hours of structured content presented using didactic instruction, video demonstrations, group discussions, and guided couple exercises. Skills focus on interpersonal emotion regulation (e.g., emotion identification, acceptance, reappraisal, and problem solving) and evidence-based communication strategies (e.g., structured communication strategies, conflict de-escalation).

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

  collaborator FED

• Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Sarah Carter, Ph.D. · Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2025-09-22

Primary Completion

2027-05-31

Completion

2028-07-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations