Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Background & Objective: Each person has a certain tolerance to stress in certain times and conditions. When that exceeds the person's power, it will inevitably lead to mental and emotional disturbances. One of the stresses that causes a lot of stress is the stress of a disabled child, which can have long-term effects, and puts the family's underlying foundations at serious risk. Women are exposed to two large groups of stress, that is, stress due to biological identity and stress arising from professional responsibilities. Reproductive activity is the basis of women's stress syndrome and the other source of stress in women is the professional and home-based responsibilities including taking care of the elderly, children and children with special needs in this category. Therefore, mothers of children with special needs experience more stress than mothers of normal children. Increasing the level of parental stress affects parents' ability to care for children, which has negative consequences for the child. Therefore, the purpose of the research was to assess the relationship between distress tolerance, helplessness and fundamental recognition in the scheme of mothers of children with mental disorders and mothers of children with physical disabilities.
Methods: This study was descriptive and of comparative type. The study population consisted of mothers of children with mental disorders and mothers of children with disabilities and mental disabilities under the auspices of welfare rehabilitation centers and clinics. The sample consisted of 124 participants (62 mothers with mental disorders and 62 mothers with disabilities and mental disabilities) who were selected by random sampling. The criteria for entry into the study were: Having a psychiatric disorder in children with mental disorders, ages 19 to 45, congenital disabilities in disabled children, having at least one healthy child in the family. Exit criteria included: divorced families, families with only one child, family with more than one child with mental and physical disorders. The research instruments were the CERQ-P questionnaire and emotional schema questionnaire (ESSP). Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to analyze the data. To implement the ethical interventions in this study, the ethical codes proposed by the Iranian-American Psychological Association (2003) and the organization of the system of psychology and counseling of the Islamic Republic of Iran (2006) were considered.
Results: In order to compare the two groups of participants in cognitive emotion regulation strategies, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used first. The result of the Mbox test showed that the covariance matrix of the dependent variables in the groups is identical and multivariate analysis of variance can be used. The results of the multivariate test of Wilkes' landlord were significant (p=0.001). The significance of this test shows that there is a significant difference between cognitive emotion regulation strategies between the two groups, but this does not indicate which groups differ in which strategies. For this purpose, one-way analysis of variance was used. The results showed that in the strategies of cognitive regulation, blame, disaster, blame and evaluation, the average scores of mothers of children with mental disorders are more than those of mothers of disabled children. On the other hand, in the compromise strategy, unrealized rumination and positive re-focus, re-focus on planning, positive re-evaluation mothers of children with mental disorders  got higher scores (p=0.001).
Conclusion: Mothers of children with mental disorders and disabled children often use such maladaptive strategies as cognitive emotion regulation strategies and emotional schemas in order to manage emotions, which can put them at risk of mental problems and conflicts.