The effect of social skills training on mental health, life quality and social adjustment of mothers with mentally retarded boy students

Subject Areas : social psychology

Ali Reza Farhang Isfahani ¹ , Mitra Farhang Isfahani ² , Sayyedeh Elham Mokhtari Yousefabad ³ , Tayebeh Ebadi ⁴ , Sara Haghighat ⁵

1 - Department of Educational Sciences, Bandar Abbas Branch, Islamic Azad University, Bandar Abbas, Iran
2 - Department of Educational Sciences, Bandar Abbas Branch, Islamic Azad University, Bandar Abbas, Iran
3 - MA of Rehabilitation Consulting, Department of Consulting, Jahad University Researcher, Kohgiluyeh and BoyerAhmad, Iran
4 - MA of Educational Psychology, Department of Psychology, Savah Branch, Islamic Azad University, Saveh, Iran
5 - Department of Psychology, Gharmsar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Gharmsar, Iran

Received: 2017-05-12 Accepted : 2018-04-24 Published : 2018-05-22

Keywords: mental health, social adjustment, Life quality, Social skills training,

Abstract :

Present research aimed to investigate the effect of social skills training on mental health, life quality and social adjustment. This was a quasi-experimental with a pre-test and post-test design. The statistical population of research were included all mothers with mentally retarded boy students in Varamin city in 2017-18 academic years that from them 40 person were selected through available sampling method and randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups (each group 20 person). The experimental group trained the social skills for 8 sessions of 60 minutes. Groups completed the questionnaires of short form of mental symptoms (Najjarian & Davoodi, 2001), life quality (World Health Organization, 2010) and social adjustment (Bell, 1961) in the pre-test and post-test stages. Data was analyzed with multivariate analysis of covariance method and with using SPSS-21 software. The findings showed there is a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in the three variables of mental health, life quality and social adjustment. In the other words social skills training significantly led to improve the mental health, life quality and social adjustment of mothers with mentally retarded boy students (P<0/01). Therefore, the results indicate the importance of social skills training on improving mental health, life quality and social adjustment of mothers with mentally retarded boy students.