Effectiveness of Group Interpersonal Psychotherapy on Increasing the Resiliency of Disabled Children's Mothers

Having a disabled child as a major stressor has affected the psychological health of parents, especially mothers; accordingly, this investigation was conducted to study the effectiveness of Group interpersonal psychotherapy on increasing the resiliency of disabled children's mothers.

The research method is quasi-experimental designed with a pretest, posttest, control group and six months follow up. The population of the present study included all mothers of disabled children who were under the aegis of Gorveh Welfare Organization. Based on the Cochran formula one hundred and eighteen mothers were selected through the simple random method; then the questionnaire was applied. Thirty mothers with criteria of entering and resilience score lower than the average of others were selected as the study sample; dived into experimental and control groups Fifteen people for each. The experiential group received twelve weekly sessions of standard interpersonal psychotherapy protocol. The control group did not receive any intervention. Connor and Davidson’s2003 resilience scale questionnaire was administered to collect data at the pretest, posttest and follow-up stage. And at the end covariance analysis was used to examine the research hypotheses.

The results of covariance analysis between two groups showed that group interpersonal psychotherapy could be effective in improving the resiliency of mothers with disabled children in the experimental group in the posttest and follow-up stage.

It can be concluded that group interpersonal psychotherapy is an effective method to increase the resiliency of mothers with disabled children. This method is suggested to psychologists, counselors and other mental health professionals.