The Process of Group Counseling Based on Reality Therapy Applied to the Parents of Children with Disabilities

• Main Authors: Gamze Ülker Tümlü, Ramazan Akdoğan, Ayşe Sibel Türküm
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: International Journal of Early Childhood Special Education 2017-12-01
• Series: International Journal of Early Childhood Special Education
• Subjects: parents of children with disabilities; reality therapy; choice theory; basic psychological needs
• Online Access: https://www.int-jecse.net/index.php/ijecse/article/view/127

The aim of this study was to use a Reality Therapy approach to identify the psyc-hological difficulties and the psychological support requirements of the parents of children with disabilities and to develop a group counseling program with a group to meet these requirements, and then to experimentally assess the effect of the prog-ram on the hopelessness, and state and trait anxiety levels of the parents and their perceptions of social support. A total of 32 parents of children with disabilities vo-luntarily participated in the study, comprising 27 females and 5 males. The study consisted of 2 stages, the first of which was applied as semi-structured interviews within the framework of qualitative research. On a theoretical basis and the fin-dings obtained from the interviews were developed into the Reality Therapy-Based Group Counseling Program (RTGCP). In the second stage of the study, the effect on dependent variables of the RTGCP was tested with a 2 x 2 design on 20 female volunteers from the 32 participants. The findings showed that the RTGCP had a statistically significant effect on the increase in multiple perceptions of social sup-port (z=-2.67; p<0.05) and the decrease in state anxiety levels (U=16.00; p<0.05).