Meaning of Life, Mothers of Mentally Retarded Children, Positive Psychotherapy, Psychological Well-Being, Resilience

The current research aimed to determine the effectiveness of positive psychotherapy on the psychological well-being, resilience, and meaning of life of mothers of mentally retarded children. The present research method was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population in this research was all mothers with mentally retarded children in the Sai Noor rehabilitation center of Saveh City in 2022, among them 24 people, 12 people in the control group and 12 people in the experimental group were selected through the available sampling method. They were randomly placed in two groups. To collect data, questionnaires of demographic characteristics, psychological well-being of Reif (PWB) (1989), resilience questionnaire of Connor and Davidson (CD_RSC) (2003), and meaning of life questionnaire (MLQ) (2006) were used. To analyze the data, the multivariate covariance test (MANCOVA) was used. The findings of the research showed that by controlling the pre-test effect between the post-test mean of psychological well-being, resilience, and meaning of life in two groups. There was a significant difference between test and control at the level of 0.05. As a result, positive psychotherapy can be considered as an effective intervention for mothers of mentally retarded children.