Relationship among Image of God and Attachment to God with Mental Health in Parents of Exceptional Children

The aim of the current study was to investigate relationship among image of God and attachment to God with mental health in parents of exceptional children in Tehran City.

168 parents were selected in Tehran by accessible sampling procedure. The following scales were administered on them: Attachment to God Scale (Rowatt & Kirkpacrick, 2002); Image of God Inventory (Lawrence, 1997) and Symptom Checklist-90R(Derogatisy,1973).

Analysis of data revealed that mental health in parents of exceptional children can be predicted by quality of attachement to God and image of God. Parents of exceptional children who were more secure in their attachment to God, were more healtheir than others. In addition, parents of exceptional children holding a more positive image of God, were having lower scores in their global index of mental distress.

Theoretical implica-tions as well as practical applications of these findings are illustracted in the original paper.