Effectiveness of a Therapeutic Counseling Program Based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Techniques in Developing Psychological Resilience among Mothers of Children with Mental Disabilities

Abstract

Abstract

The study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a counseling program based on acceptance and commitment techniques in developing resilience among mothers of children with mental disabilities. The study used a quasi-experimental design with a sample consisting of (24) mothers of children with mental disabilities، randomly distributed into two groups: experimental and control، each consisting of (12) mothers. The psychological resilience scale prepared by Conner-Davidson (2003) and adapted by Al-Wakil and Radi (2017), and the economic, social, and cultural level scale prepared by Saafan and Khattab (2016) were applied as well as a counseling program using acceptance and commitment therapy techniques prepared by the researcher. The most important results revealed the effectiveness of the counseling program based on acceptance and commitment therapy in developing psychological resilience in the post-test, and the persistence of the program’s effect in the follow-up test, where statistically significant differences were found between the rank averages of the scores of the two experimental and control groups on the psychological resilience scale for mothers of children with mental disabilities in the post-test in favor of the experimental group، which means improving psychological resilience among the experimental group and the persistence of the program’s effect. The study recommends activating counseling programs based on acceptance and commitment to develop psychological resilience among mothers of children with mental disabilities.