Effectiveness of existential psychotherapy in increasing the resiliency of mentally retarded children’s mothers

The research purpose is to assess the effectiveness of existential psychotherapy in increasing the resiliency of mentally-retarded children’s mothers. Therefore, this study employed an experimental design and the sample comprised 24 mothers having mentally retarded children who were assigned to control and experimental groups. The experimental group underwent 9 sessions of existential psychotherapy. The research tools included the Resiliency Scale Questionnaire designed and developed by Hamdel et al. Descriptive statistics, including the analysis of covariance was used to analyze the data. Findings indicated that existential psychotherapy has proved to be effective in increasing the resiliency of mentally retarded children’s mothers. The use of various treatment approaches such as existential approach can enhance and enrich the mental health of mothers of mentally retarded children.