The Effectiveness of Quality of Life Therapy (QOLT) on Psychological Capital and Self-forgiveness of Mothers having Children with Locomotor Disability

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of Quality of Life Therapy (QOLT) on psychological capital, and self-forgiveness in mothers having children with locomotor disability. This study was performed using an experimental study with pretest-posttest and follow-up (one month) with control group. The statistical population included all mothers having handicapped children with locomotor disability, of whom 20 mothers were selected through purposeful sampling from one of the exceptional schools in Shiraz in the academic year 2018-2019. Having been selected through purposeful sampling, the mothers were randomly divided into a control (10) and a test group (10). The intervention involved ten ninety-minute sessions of group teaching to improve the quality of life in the test group , while the control group was placed on the waiting list and did not receive any training until the end of the course. The participants went through two stages of post-test and follow-ups. The research instruments included two questionnaires: Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ); and Self-forgiveness Questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed through one-variable and multivariable covariance tests using SPSS software, version 24. The results showed that quality of life therapy had a significant effect on psychological capital and on hope and optimism components in both post-test and follow-up stages and there was no significant effect on resiliency and selfefficacy. The findings further suggested that this training program had a significant effect on the self-efficacy of mothers of locomotor disabled children; however, this effect on self-efficacy was not found stable within the one-month follow-up study. Therefore, it can be argued that training positive psychology and cognitive psychology approaches by building positive constructs such as hope and optimism and increasing self-forgiveness can be useful in enhancing the quality of life for families having physically challenged children.