The Relationship Between Coping Style, Religiosity and Personality with Mental Health Mothers of Children with Intellectual Disabilities

The purpose of this study is to assess the relationship between coping style, religiosity and personality with mental health of mothers with children of mental retardation.

The sample consisted of 95 mothers with children of mental retardation, selected with convenience sampling model. Data were collected by means of ways of coping questionnaire (WOCQ), Islamic Religiosity Scale (IRS), revised NEO five factor inventory (NEO FFI-R) and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and then analyzed with statistical ways of correlation and regression.

The results show coping style, religiosity and personality are capable of predicting the significant percentage of variance of mental health of children with intellectual disabilities. Furthermore, from 17 subscales used for predicting of variance of mental health of mothers with children of mental retardation, only religiosity and neuroticism were significantly capable of accounting for mental health of mothers.

We can conclude that training mothers of children with ID to accept their child, to find meaning of their life and to strengthen religious beliefs can have great effect on promotion of their mental health.