Effectiveness of Reality Therapy on the Stigma of Mothers of Children with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

This study was done to determine the effectiveness of reality therapy on the Stigma of mothers of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities of Sabzevar city. This study was semi -experimental and pretest-posttest with control group. The statistical population of this research was all mothers of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities of Sabzevar in the academic year 2016-2017 that 34 mothers of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities were selected by available sampling method and randomly assigned to two experimental groups (17 persons) and control group (17 persons), then both groups were given pre-test. The experimental group received reality therapy intervention during 8 sessions (each session 75 minutes), while the control group received no intervention. After the intervention, the two groups were given a post-test. Data was collected using a standard questionnaire of Stigma Rittcher et al. (2003).The collected data was analyzed using descriptive statistics methods (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (covariance analysis). The results showed that Reality Therapy have a significant effect on the Stigma and its components including alienation, stereotype endorsement, discrimination experience and social withdrawal of the mothers of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities and the mothers of the experimental group had significantly less stigma than the control group mothers in the post-test (p