Effects of Compassion-Focused Therapy on Parental Distress Tolerance in the Mothers of Children With Learning Disorders

Learning disorder is a neurological condition that affects one or more of the most basic psychological processes in learning, speaking, or writing. The main characteristic of children with learning disabilities is the childchr('39')s overall intellectual ability. Learning disorders present severe effects on the parents of these children, such as high levels of anxiety, stress, isolation, and decreased quality of life. Parental stress experience suggests that most mothers encounter parental stress; accordingly, when parents experience stress, they affect their childchr('39')s reading and writing, and the child may have difficulty learning such skills. Furthermore, the affected child is not expected to have a positive trend of school achievements. Due to inability to learn and other factors, such as inability to writing, memorizing tasks, and understanding, the educational progress of these children is delayed or interrupted. Parental stress affects the degree of distress tolerance. A strategy that seems to be effective in reducing adverse outcomes is employing research–supported therapeutic approaches. Among the approaches that have been the focus of therapists in recent years is the Compassion–Focused Therapy (CFT) developed by Gilbert. In CFT, individuals learn not to avoid and suppress their painful emotions, but to feel them. This treatment recognizes the flow of compassion in 3 ways, as follows: the compassion we can feel toward others, the compassion we can feel from others, and the compassion we can guide ourselves. The present study aimed to determine the effects of CFT in coping with distress and parental stress in the mothers of children with learning disabilities.

This was a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest and a control group design. The statistical population consisted of all mothers of children with learning disabilities in Baharestan City, Iran in the academic year of 2018–2019. Thirty eligible individuals were selected by the convenience sampling method. They were randomly divided into two groups of control and experimental (n=15/group). Research tools included the Distress Tolerance Scale (Simmons & Gahr, 2005) and the Parenting Stress Index–Short Form (Abidin, 1). The experimental group received eight 60–minute weekly sessions of CFT; however, the controls received no intervention. At the end of the training sessions, a posttest was performed in both study groups. Univariate Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to analyze the collected data (α=0.05).

The obtained data revealed that by eliminating the effect of pretest scores, there was a significant difference between the adjusted mean scores of distress tolerance and parental stress of the mothers of children with learning disorders by group membership (test & control) (p≤0.001). The mean score of distress tolerance significantly increased; however, the mean parental stress scores decreased significantly (p≤0.001). Therefore, the effect of CFT in distress tolerance was equal to 0.352, and concerning marital adjustment, it was measured as 0.370.

According to the timing of this study, it can be concluded that there was a significant difference in the distress tolerance and parental stress of the mothers of children with learning disorders between the experimental and control groups. Increased distress tolerance and reduced parental stress were observed in the study participants.