The Effectiveness of Life Skills Training on the Psychological Well-being, Communication Skill and Maternal Parenting Stress of Mothers of Children with Intellectual Disability

 The present article was done with the aim to investigate the effectiveness of Life Skills therapy on the psychological well-being, communication skills and maternal parenting stress of mothers of Children with Intellectual Disability.

 The research method was quasi-experimental method with a pretest and posttest design plus control group. The statistical society of the study consisted of all the mothers of Children with Intellectual Disability in exceptional schools of Urmia city during 2021-2022; among them 40 students were selected in available sampling method as the sample case and categorized in experimental group (20 children) and control group (20 children). Data collection instruments included Riff psychological well-being questionnaire, Matson scale to evaluate mothers’ communication skills and Abidin (1983) to estimate maternal parenting stress level. The validity of research instruments was confirmed by the approval of specialists and the reliability was estimated and approved by calculating Cronbach alpha coefficient (α> 0.7). Prior to the study, pre-test of psychological well-being, communication skills and maternal parenting stress was implemented in both groups. The experimental group received life skills therapy through the training package in 10 sessions, but the control group did not receive any training therapy. After the training course in the post-test stage, both of the groups answered to the same questionnaire of pre-test stage. The research data was analyzed with one way and Multivariate Covariance Analysis.

 The results revealed that life skills therapy had a positive effect on the increase of psychological well-being and its five subscales, communication skills and maternal parenting stress and its subscales(P<0.05).

 According to the effectiveness of life skills therapy in the present research, it was suggested to the principles of exceptional schools to establish relations among school officials and mothers with intellectually disabled children, through life skills training and counseling sessions to improve these mothers’ psychological well-being and communication skills and also, to reduce their parenting stress.