Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Background & Objectives: Intellectual disability is a general term that encompasses varying degrees of cognitive functions and adaptive behavior. Adaptation problems in school and at home are common among children with intellectual disabilities, among which behavior problems are more prevalent. Some studies confirm the role of genetics or a combination of genetics and environmental factors in behavior problems. Researchers believe that behavior problems in these children are primarily due to environmental factors such as inappropriate parenting practices. In this regard, parents with mentally disabled children should gain parent management skills to reduce the stressful parent–child interaction and the incidence of behavior problems and maladaptation among children. Inappropriate parenting methods prevent the healthy development of social and emotional behaviors in children, and over time, behavior problems such as verbal and nonverbal aggression, hostility, and anxiety appear. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to investigate the effect of parent management training on behavioral problems in students with intellectual disabilities.
Methods: This research is a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest design and a control group. The independent variable was parent management training, and the dependent variable was behavior problems. The study's statistical population included all mothers of students with intellectual disabilities living in Saqez City, Iran, during the academic year of 2019–2020. The sample consisted of 30 mothers selected by convenience sampling method from an exceptional school in Saqez. They were randomly assigned to one experimental and one control group (n=15 for each group). The inclusion criteria for mothers were having children with intellectual disabilities, lacking physical and mental illness in mothers, gaining students' behavior problems scores higher than cut–off point 13 (Children's Behaviour Questionnaire, Rutter, 1967), having full consent to participate in the research, and participating in all sessions. The exclusion criteria for mothers of students with intellectual disabilities were non–cooperation, failure to score higher than the cut–off point on the Children's Behaviour Questionnaire (Rutter, 1967), and not participating in the intervention for more than two sessions. The pretest and posttest were performed individually for both groups through the Children's Behaviour Questionnaire (Rutter, 1967). In the experimental group, the mothers received eight 90–min sessions of group parent management training twice a week for one month. Research data analysis was performed through descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (multivariate analysis of covariance). The significance level was considered less than 0.05. All statistical analyzes were performed in SPSS version 20.
Results: Results showed that parent management training effectively reduced behavior problems in students with intellectual disabilities. The intervention also reduced aggression and hyperactivity, depression and anxiety, social maladaptation, antisocial behaviors, and lack of attention (p<0.001) in these children. The intervention's effect size on reducing behavior problems was 0.75 and on its subscales were 0.83 for aggression and hyperactivity, 0.86 for depression and anxiety, 0.74 for social maladaptation, 0.33 for antisocial behaviors, and 0.60 for lack of attention.
Conclusion: Based on the research findings, the behavior problems of students with intellectual disabilities are reduced in the mothers receiving parent management training compared to the mothers without training.