Developing a life quality promoting program and investigation of its effectiveness on mental health and marital satisfaction of mothers with down syndrome daughters

Quality of life is a multidimensional concept that engages many aspects of an individual’s life. Also, menatal health and mariral satisfaction are two important components of life quality. The aim of the present study was to design a training program for improving the quality of life and assessing its effects on mental health and marital satisfaction among mother's of girls with down syndrome. The research method was a quasi-experimental design with pre-test, post-test and control group. The population consisted of all mothers of girls who were slow-paced in education (IQ 50 to 70) with down syndrome, aged 7 to 15 years in Tehran. A total of 60 mothers were selected using available sampling and then assigned to two experimental and control groups. The experimental group received twelve researcher-made educational sessions for quality of life improvement while the control group did not receive any training. The program was designed in 10 sessions of 90 minutes held for 5 weeks. The SCL-90-R Questionnaire was used to measure mental health, and the Afrooz Marital Satisfaction Questionnaire was used to assess marital satisfaction among couples. The results showed a significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups, mental health and marital satisfaction at pre-test and post-test phases. The results also revealed that a quality of life educational program can be used to improve mental health and marital satisfaction in mothers of down syndrome girls.