The Effectiveness of strategic solution oriented Therapy, The Meditation Technique and Meta Cognitive Therapy on Mind wandering and Rumination among mothers of children with an autism spectrum disorder

The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of strategic solution oriented therapy, the meditation technique and metacognitive therapy on mind wandering and rumination among mothers of children with an autism spectrum disorder. The method of the research was quasi-experimental and it used a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The statistical sample included all mothers of children with ASD who were studying at special children's training centers in the south of Tehran during 2019. They were selected through purposive sampling and randomly divided into three experimental groups ((strategic solution oriented therapy (n=14), the meditation technique (n=14), metacognitive therapy (n=14)), and one control group. Each of the experimental groups was under treatment for 1.30 hour while the control group did not receive any therapy. The subjects were assessed before and after the treatment using Mind-Wandering Questionnaire (MWQ), and Rumination Response Scale (RRS). All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS ver. 25. The majority of mothers (32.1%) were between 25 and 30 years of age and concerning the educational degrees, the mothers with a diploma comprised the biggest percentage (44.6%). The results showed that all of the solution-oriented strategic methods, meditation, and metacognitive therapies can significantly decrease the mind wandering and rumination in the mothers of children with an autism spectrum disorder (P <0.05), while solution-oriented strategies showed higher effects than meditation and metacognitive approach. According to the test results, the solution-oriented strategic method, meditation method, and metacognitive method were respectively effective in reducing mind wandering, with the first one having the most impacts, and the last method being the least influential one.