The Effectiveness of Emotion Efficacy Therapy on Psychological Hardiness and Parental Burnout among Mothers with Autistic Children

Aim:

 The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of emotion efficacy therapy on psychological hardiness and parental burnout of mothers with autistic children.

Method :

The research method was semi-experimental with a pre-test, post-test and follow-up design. The statistical population of this research included all mothers with autistic children who referred to Dasthaye Mehrabani School (Darya) in Isfahan in 2022. Thirty mothers were selected by purposive sampling method based on the entry and exit criteria and randomly replaced in two intervention and control groups (15 people in each group). Both groups before and after the intervention and 2 months later, in the follow-up phase, were given research tools including the Psychological Hardiness Inventory by Kobasa, Maddi and Kahn (1982) and the Parental Burnout Assessment by Roskam, Brianda and Mikolajczak (2018). The experimental group were treated based on emotion efficacy therapy in 8 sessions of 2 hours, but no intervention was done on the control group. The collected data were analyzed using MANCOVA. 

Results: 

Emotion efficacy therapy was effective on psychological hardiness and parental burnout (p< 0/05), and the effect of this change remained stable until the follow-up stage (p<0/05).

Conclusion :

Emotion efficacy therapy can be used to increase psychological hardiness and  decrease parental burnout among mothers with autistic children.