The effect of the Islamic Positive Thinking Training on Anger Management and Life Satisfaction in Mothers of Exceptional children

Having children is one of the strengths of couple relationships. Despite this, the presence of a disabled child is very stressful for parents especially mothers, because they experience more stress, guilty feeling, and fatigue. The present study aimed at investigating the effect of Islamic positive thinking on reduced anger and life satisfaction among mothers having disabled children.
This study is a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental one. The population consisted of mothers having children with special needs in Roodsar, Iran. A total of 36 participants were recruited through an announcement in exceptional children centers, of whom 6 participants were excluded. The inclusion criteria included having one child with special needs, having at least high school diploma, having no apparent psychological disorders, and getting divorced. The participants were divided into two groups, namely, experimental (N=15) and control (N=15). The research instruments were a demographic information questionnaire (age, gender, marriage status and employment), Novaco Anger Scale (NAS) and Life Satisfaction Scale (LSS). NAS includes 25 questions consisting of five items scored 0-4. This test was constructed by Novaco (2002) and was standardized. Its reliability and validity were reported as 0.61 (p Mean and SD of the age of experimental and control group were 41.6, 7.48 and 39.8, 3.21, respectively, concerning the education, 70% had diploma, 20% associate degree, 10% master degree. These were 73%, 15% and 12% in the control group respectively. Regarding the education, 77% of the experimental and 23% of control groups were housewives. The results revealed significant pretest-posttest differences in the control group with respect to anger and life satisfaction (p It could be concluded that Islamic optimism training plan reduced anger feeling and led to an increase in life satisfaction of mothers having children with special needs. So, it is recommended to incorporate the plan in intellectual teachings or designing family training plans.