The Impact of Stress Inoculation Training on Cognitive Emotion Regulation and Psychological Problems of the Mothers of Blind Children with Blindness

Mothers of blind children have difficulty regulating emotions and psychological reactions. Stress inoculation training (SIT) seems to be advantageous for them. This study aimed to investigate the effect of stress inoculation on cognitive emotion regulation and psychological problems of mothers of blind children.

The present research is a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design and control group. The study population included mothers of blind children aged 7-10 years in Isfahan city in 2018-2019. The participants were selected by convenient sampling method from Shahid Samani and Shahid Abedi schools and randomly divided into two experimental (N=17) and control (N=17) groups. The experimental group received the intervention in ten 45-minutes sessions, but the control group did not receive any training. The instruments used were the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski & Kraaij, 2006) and the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (Lawibund & Lawibund, 1995). Data were analyzed by MANOVA in SPSS.

The results indicated that SIT had a significant impact on the adaptive strategies of cognitive emotion regulation in the participants (F=6.91, P=0.01), but it had not a significant effect on their maladaptive strategies (F=0.19, P=0.66). Moreover, the program had a significant impact on depression (F=22.42, P=0.0001) and stress (F=10.99, P=0.002) of participants, but there was no significant impact on their anxiety (F=0.19, P=0.66).

The SIT affects emotional experiences and psychological reactions; therefore, it plays a crucial role in improving the emotion regulation and psychological problems of mothers of blind children.