The Effectiveness of Hope Therapy on Improving Depression and Quality of Life among Mothers of Intellectual Disability Children

Abstract

The Effectiveness of Hope Therapy on Improving Depression and Quality of Life among Mothers of Intellectual Disability Children This study aims at investigating the effectiveness of hope therapy on improvement of depression and quality of life among mothers of intellectual disability children. The research procedure is quasi-experimental with pre-test and post-test design and control group. Research population consists of mothers of intellectual disability whose children have been students of 28 exceptional schools in the academic year of 2011-2012 in Mashhad. 30mothers of intellectually disable children are selected by using multistage cluster sampling and are and randomly assigned in two experimental (15 persons) and control groups (15 persons). The experimental group receives hope therapy training for 6 sessions. The data are gathered by using Beck Depression Inventory-Õ and the brief form of quality of life questionnaires. Questionnaires are completed by both experimental and control groups in three stages before, after and 4 weeks after the intervention (follow-up phase). The results are analyzed with Moncova using SPSS 18 software. The Moncova analysis results show that there is significant difference between average scores of experimental and control groups in both post-test and follow-up stages )P<0/001). As a conclusion, hope therapy training is quite effective in improving depression and quality of life in mothers of intellectually children.

Keywords

• intellectually disability
• depression
• quality of life
• hope therapy