Introduction: According to the research more than 90% of deaf children are born into hearing parents. The existence of such a child, put all the family members in very bad conditions, especially their mothers, since the mother communicates whit her child most of the time, so she will tolerate the most difficulties and suffer from changing her own feeling terribly. The fear of child's condition taking a turn for the worse as he/she is becoming older is another problem that mother face. Her concern is about that if his impaired hearing child can become older and has a happy and healthy life without overcoming this problem. It is possible that all his/ her hopes are shattered without something else replacing it. One of the roots of people’s vulnerability is the meaninglessness and purposelessness. When human being confronts with an inevitable situation or an unchangeable fate, he/ she has found the opportunity to achieve the most excellent values and the deepest meaning of life. Pain and suffering are the clearest manifestation of existential of human being. Person’s attitude toward suffering and how he/she tolerates it is very important. The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of group logotherapy on improving the quality of life of hearing impaired children’s mothers.
Method: This study is applied and semi- experimental that conducted with control group, random assigned pretest, posttest and follow- up test. The population comprised all the mothers of hearing impaired children in Karaj and also were selected among the mothers of exceptional students of Shohada's primary school. The study participants were selected through approachable sampling, being volunteer subject and then randomly assigned to the case group (15) and control group (15). Both group members tested based on the quality of life scale in the stages of pretest and posttest. The case group in the intervention of group logotherapy consisted 9 sessions each taking 90 minutes. Data was collected and processed through SPSS to calculate the mean score, standard deviation, t- test and analysis of covariance.
Findings: The average quality of life of mothers of children with hearing loss after the intervention in the experimental group were higher than the control group and the difference is statistically significant (0.000). In addition, covariance revealed that in the post-test phase, there is a significant difference between the two groups in the aspects of physical , mental and environmental health (P<0/001, P<0/01, P<0/01) .This means that a group logotherapy has improved the quality of life of hearing impaired children's mothers in the aspects of physical , mental and environmental health . But in the realm of health of social relations, a significant difference was not observed between the two groups at post-test phase (P=0/11) .This means that in the realm of health of social relations, group logotherapy has not had a considerable effect on the quality of life of hearing impaired children’s mothers in the intervention group and both groups are almost in the same situation.
Discussion: In explaining research finding, one can say that what exhausts human being are not sufferings and their unpleasant fate, but becoming meaningless of life is disastrous and brings with it despair. Human being oneself choose his response against the sufferings and unwanted difficulties while they are occurred and based on environmental conditions. When the conditions are unchangeable such as having an impaired hearing child, one can choose freely the attitude and the way of dealing with. During this research, subjects found out this issue that the existence of an impaired hearing child and the problems caused by it is not an end of life, in their present life, they can enjoy their surrounding facilities and enjoy being together. In regards to the instruction is given to them, they realized that they can learn to change coping way with life's difficulties whereas they are not able to change definite events of their life and show desirable reaction against the suffering events of life and the most restrictive conditions. Therefore they found new meaning in their suffering and pain and could find the cause of their life and accept its conditions .One can also refer to similarity and congruity this therapeutic approach with religious beliefs of our country .This belief that difficulties, illnesses, and problems are the wisdom and expedient of God and the world life is a passageway for other world of eternal life that always makes religious people more resistant ,more patient and hopeful .Hope divine mercy is from the religious beliefs of Muslims .One can say that the group logotherapy has been able to live and reinforce religious beliefs of this group of mothers. Therefore, it seems that tendency to the meaning is an easier and more favorable way for acceptance of bearing an impaired hearing child .One can also conclude that achieving the meaning of pain, suffering and catastrophic unwanted events make the quality of life of impaired hearing children's mothers improve in mentioned difficult conditions. Because of this, using this therapeutic approach about other mothers of hearing impaired children is recommended.
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