The Effectiveness of Group Positive Training on Marital Happiness, Resilience and Life Satisfaction in Parents of Children with Special Needs

Introduction: Parents of children with special needs due to their children problems face with many problems including decrease marital happiness, resilience and life satisfaction and group positive training is one of the effective therapeutic methods. Therefore, present research aimed to determine the effectiveness of positive couple therapy on marital happiness, resilience and life satisfaction in parents of children with special needs. Methods: The method of this study was semi-experimental with a pretest-posttest design and control group. The research population was parents of children with special needs of Ahvaz city in 2018-19 academic years, which from them the parent of 30 students were selected by available sampling method and randomly assigned into two equal groups (each group 15 couple). The experimental group received group positive training for 14 sessions of 90-minutes based on package of Seligman & et al (2006) and the control group receive no training. Research tools were the questionnaires of marital happiness (Azreen & et al, 1973), resilience (Connor & Davidson, 2003) and life satisfaction (Diner & et al, 1985). Data analyzed by Chi-square, independent t and multivariate analysis of covariance tests in SPSS-24 software. Results: The findings showed that in the pretest stage there wasn’t significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of marital happiness, resilience and life satisfaction (P>0/05), but in the posttest between them there was significant difference in terms of all three variables of marital happiness, resilience and life satisfaction (P<0/001). In the other words, group positive training led to increased marital happiness (F=1069/574), resilience (F=281/722) and life satisfaction (F=414/315) in parents of children with special needs (P<0/001). Conclusions: The results indicated the effectiveness of group positive training on marital happiness, resilience and life satisfaction in parents of children with special needs. Therefore, it is suggested that to use this method along with other therapeutic methods to improve psychological characteristics.