COPING ENHANCEMENT PROGAM FOR THE MOTHERS OF SPECIAL CHILDREN- A PRELIMINARY STUDY
Background: Caring for a family member with a special challenging problem is a signicant chronic stressor in humans.In fact, caregiver stress is currently seen as a human model of chronic stress in the stress literature. As a need based interventions with mothers can help them reduce their stress and increase their coping levels, this study was conducted on the effectiveness of coping enhancement program for the mothers of special children. Objective:The overall objective of this study was to establish whether the Coping enhancement program could be utilized when the population of interest is caregivers of special children with psychiatric, behavioral or emotional disorders. Study design:A survey cum quasi experimental, one group pretest post test design was used for this study. Materials and methods:The present study was conducted in three phases- Assessment of stress, coping level and coping factors of mothers of special children, development of a coping enhancement programme and administering the coping enhancement programme to mothers. The effectiveness of the program was judged by the difference between the pretest and post test score. The population selected for the study were the mothers of the special children admitted in special schools of Puducherry Union Territory. Results: The coping enhancement programme was found to be signicantly effective among mothers handling special children in coping with their stress and thus it may result in enhancing the quality of life of the special children.