The Effectiveness of Schema Therapy on Parental Stressand Psychological Hardiness of Mothers of Children withAutism Spectrum Disorder

The aim of present study was to investigate the effectiveness of schema therapy on parental stress and psychological hardiness of mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder in 2019.

This semi-experimental study was conducted as pre-test and post-test with control group. Statistical population included all mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder in the city of ANDIMESHK. From among these mothers, 30 mothers were randomly selected and put into the experimental and control groups of 15 persons each. The parenting stress index (Abidin, 1995) and psychological hardiness questionnaire (Kobasa, Maddi & Kahn, 1982) was the instrument of this study. First, the pretest was conducted on the two groups. Then, the experimental group was exposed to an eight-session training of group schema therapy these sessions were weekly held in group. At the end, the post-test was applied on both groups.

The results of covariance analysis indicated that schema therapy has significantly decreased parenting stress and increasing psychological hardiness and there is a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in the psychological hardiness and parenting stress of the mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder (P<0.001). The mean of stress in the experimental group was lower than the mean of the control group. Also, the psychological hardiness in the experimental group was higher than that of the control group. Thus, the effectiveness of schema therapy on increasing psychological hardiness and decreasing the level of parental stress of mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder was confirmed.

Based on the results of the effectiveness of schema therapy approach on childbearing stress and psychological stubbornness of mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder, it can be concluded that schema therapy training is an effective treatment to promote psychological stubbornness and reduce parental stress and generally improve mentally healthy.