Effectiveness of positive thinking group education on tolerance of distress and social adjustment of mothers of children with mental retardation

Families with disabled children require educational services, as well as psychological and financial support and counseling due to the low threshold for tolerance and inadequacy in adaptation. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of positive thinking group education on tolerance and social adjustment in mothers of educable children with mental retardation.

This quasi-experiment had a pretest-posttest design and a control group. The research population included all mothers of children with mental retardation, who referred to schools for children with special needs in Khoramabad, Iran in the academic year 2018-2019. In total, 30 mothers were selected by convenience sampling, who were then divided into two groups of test (n=15) and control (n=15) using simple random sampling. Data were collected using Simmons and Gaherchr('39')s The Distress Tolerance Scale (DTS) and California social adjustment Questionnaire. The participants in the test group attended 10 75-min positive thinking group sessions. In the end, data analysis was performed using a multivariate analysis of covariance.

In this study, a significant difference was observed between the groups after the intervention, which demonstrated the effectiveness of positive thinking training on an increased threshold for tolerance and social adjustment in the test group (P<0.05).

According to the results of the study, positive thinking education was recognized as an effective method to increase tolerance and social adjustment in mothers of children with mental retardation.