Comparison of Mental Health in Mothers of Adolescents with Special Needs and Mothers of Normal Adolescents

Mothers who have children with special needs are under more pressure than mothers whose children have no such problems. The pressure heightens when the child reaches adolescent, which can increase the mother’s frustration and risk her mental health. The purpose of this study was to compare mental health in mothers of adolescents with special needs and mothers of normal adolescents. The study used a causal- comparative method. Through random sampling, 75 mothers who had teenager with special needs and 25 mothers who had normal teenagers were selected out of all mothers in Babol. The Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R) and the Raven intelligence test (adult forms) were used for collecting data, and the data were analyzed using ANOVA and Tukey’s range test. The results indicated a significant difference in mental health between the mothers of special needs adolescents and the mothers of normal adolescents in many terms, including: depression (p = 0.033), anxiety (p = 0.008), aggression (p = 0.01), phobic anxiety (p = 0.023). In terms of compulsion, however, the difference was not significant (p = 0.10). It can be concluded that mothers of adolescents with special needs have lower levels of mental health compared to mother of normal adolescents. Furthermore, among mother of adolescents with mental impairments, deaf adolescents and gifted adolescents, the former have the poorer mental health. Based on the findings, we recommend that health care experts increase their focus on mothers of adolescents who have intellectual impairments and that they take proper actions to prevent psychological problems in general.