Determining the Effectiveness of Education Based on Existential Analysis Approach on Psychological Well-being of Mothers With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Children

Attention–deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a multifactorial disorder with a complex etiology. Meanwhile, researchers have paid attention to the parent–child relationship and family factors. Although physical factors play a role in ADHD, the role of parents, especially mothers, is important in the etiology of this disorder. One of the approaches used to increase psychological well–being is the existential analysis approach. Existential psychology is one of the branches of psychology whose pioneers turned to ontological discussions hoping to solve people's spiritual problems, such as the problem of the meaninglessness of life. The presence of children with ADHD in families can affect mothers' psychological well–being and lead to various complications. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of education based on the existential analysis approach to the psychological well–being of mothers with ADHD children.

This research was conducted by quasi–experimental method with a pretest–posttest design with a control group. The study’s statistical population included 210 mothers with ADHD children referred to psychological clinics in the western area of Tehran City, Iran, in 2018. The inclusion criteria were as follows: mothers with children with ADHD, having the physical ability to participate in research, interested in collaborating in research, lacking a specific disease, and not using certain drugs. The exclusion criteria were irregular attendance in therapy sessions and lack of interest in participating in the study. The Psychological Well–Being Scale (Ryff et al., 1998) was distributed among all mothers in the statistical population. Initial analysis revealed that 88 scored less than 189 on this scale. From this group, 30 women were selected by convenience sampling and randomly assigned to 2 groups (15 in the experimental group and 15 in the control group). An educational package based on Frankel’s (2004) existential analysis approach was implemented for the experimental group for ten 80–minute sessions. During this period, the control group did not receive any training. The Psychological Well–Being Scale (Ryff et al., 1998) was used to collect the data in the pretest and posttest for two groups. To analyze the data, mean and standard deviation were used in the descriptive statistics section and covariance analysis was used in the inferential statistics section using SPSS version 24 software. The significance level for all tests was considered 0.05.

The results showed that training based on the existential analysis approach increased the psychological well–being score in the mothers of the experimental group (p<0.001). The effect size of the mentioned training on the psychological well–being score was 0.808.

Based on the findings of the research, the training package based on the existential analysis approach is effective in improving the well–being of mothers of children with ADHD.