Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy on Cognitive Strategies of Emotional Regulation and General Self-Efficacy among Mothers of Children with Cerebral Palsy

The present study was conducted with the purpose of investigating the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy in cognitive strategies of emotional regulation and general self-efficacy of mothers with children with cerebral palsy.

It was a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest and control group design from the population of mothers with children with cerebral palsy in North Khorasan province,that 28 mothers were selected by available sampling and placed in two experimental and control groups. In the pretest, Garnfsky, Craig and Spinhaven (2009) and Schwartz (1981) general self-efficacy questionnaires were used. In the next stage, cognitive-behavioral therapy was performed on the experimental group. The control group did not received any intervention. After this step and after performing a post-test, the data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance (MANOVA).

The findings showed an increase in the mean of the experimental group in the self-efficacy variable and all positive cognitive strategies for emotion regulation.On the other hand, increasing the general self-efficacy score and positive emotion regulation strategy and decreasing the score of mothers' negative emotion regulation strategy.

According to the findings of the present study we can replace negative emotions with positive ones by informing and helping cognitive reconstruction and reduce mothers' psychological harm.