Examining the Effectiveness of Therapy Based on the Quality of Life on Improving the Psychological Wellbeing and Happiness of Mothers with Exceptional Children

The family serves as the fundamental unit for the preservation and maintenance of human emotions, relationships, intellectual standards, and high values. It also functions as a suitable stable kinship and community, a place for cultivating thoughts and morality. In addition to caring for and educating their children, the duty of parents, especially mothers, stands out to create a calm environment with healthy relationships between family members and to grow independence in their children, even those with disabilities such as mental retardation, blindness, deafness, and so on. Many researchers believe mothers of exceptional children are more depressed than mothers of typical children, unable to control their anger towards their children. Therefore, the present study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of therapy based on the quality of life (QoL) in improving the psychological wellbeing and happiness of mothers with exceptional children.

This quasi–experimental study employed a pretest–posttest design with a control group. The statistical population consisted of mothers with exceptional children living in Tehran City, Iran, in 2020. The statistical sample consisted of 31 mothers who volunteered and qualified to enter the research. They were randomly assigned to the experimental group (n=16) and the control group (n=15). The inclusion criteria were as follows: not using other psychological and psychotherapy services simultaneously with the research, lacking psychiatric disorders, not taking psychiatric drugs, and not receiving other group counseling during the research period. The exclusion criteria were as follows: not being satisfied with continuing to participate in the research, absenting more than two sessions in training sessions, and being unable to carry out the training session plans. The study data were collected by Ryff's Psychological Well–Being Scale (RPWBS) (Ryff, 1989) and the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (Argyl et al., 1989). Only the participants in the experimental group received 8 sessions of treatment based on improving their quality of life (Frisch, 2006). The research data were analyzed in descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (multivariate covariance analysis) using SPSS version 22. The significance level of the tests was set at 0.05.

The results showed that after removing the effect of the pretest, the therapy based on the QoL was effective in improving psychological wellbeing (p<0.001) and happiness (p<0.001) in mothers of exceptional children in the experimental group. According to the Eta squared, the average increase of each of the variables of psychological wellbeing and happiness was 71% and 74%, respectively, due to the intervention of this therapy.

Based on the present study, therapy based on the QoL effectively improves mothers' psychological wellbeing and happiness with exceptional children. Therefore, counselors and therapists can use this therapeutic intervention to improve the psychological wellbeing and happiness of mothers with exceptional children.