The Impact of Adler Lifestyle Education on Resiliency of Parents of Educable Mentally Retarded Students

Abstract

Introduction: Over the past two decades, the field of resiliency has attracted increasing attention in evolutionary psychology. Having mentally retarded children is one of life’s stressors for parents, that can have a devastating impact on their mental health. Therefore, any strategy that can help the parents of these children relieve stress and deal effectively is important. This study aimed to determine the impact of Adler lifestyle education on resiliency, especially on parents of mentally retarded students and will measure the following two hypotheses.

Method: This was a semi-experimental study with pre and post-test with control group. The statistical population of this study included parents of all the students of the Shahid Alavian Exceptional Education Center in Gonabad (N=120) whose children were studying in the 2012/2013 academic year; 60 people were randomly selected and assigned to two groups of 30 (case and control). It should be noted that each group consisted of 15 fathers and 15 mothers. The pre-test was administered to both groups separately. After that, the training in 11 sessions of 60 minutes was presented in the workshop of advisers for the case group. In this study, the Connor and Davidson’s resiliency questionnaire was used. In this study, the reliability coefficient equal to 0.89 was obtained using Cronbach's alpha method. To determine the validity, the correlation of each item with the total score was calculated. In the present study, the reliability of this instrument using Cronbach's alpha coefficient was determined as 0.89. Data were analyzed using SPSS for Windows version 16.

Results: The mean scores of the resiliency have increased in the case group than the control group which is statistically significant (P < 0.01). The mean scores of fathers’ resiliency have increased than mothers, but the differences were not significant between the two groups (P > 0.05).

Conclusion: The result of this study concluded that appropriate Adler lifestyle training helps parents of educable mentally retarded children to boost their resiliency. This is important due to the existence of mentally retarded children on parental stress.