Abstract

Introduction: Care for a mentally retarded child induces a lot of problems for the mother and leads her to care giving strain and ignorning her self-care. Spiritual health will co-ordinate all aspects of human life and is necessary for coping with diseases in mother of mentally retarded children. Aim: To evaluate the effects of spiritual self-care training on care giving strain in mothers of mentally retarded children. Materials and Methods: The present study, is a before and after type quasi-experimental research based on which 60 mothers of mentally retarded children who were hospitalized in Elahi Rehabilitation Center in Quchan City, were selected using convenience sampling and were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. Data was collected by demographic characteristic questionnaire and care giving strain questionnaire that were filled by groups before, immediately and two weeks after spiritual self-care training. Data was analysed using SPSS version 20. Reults: According to the results, there was no significant difference between the mean score of care giving strain in intervention and control groups before and immediately after the intervention. However, among the members of the intervention group the score of mother care giving strain decreased an average of 87.21 within two weeks after the intervention, which was statistically significant over time (p=0.001). The score of mothers in the control group increased an average of 5 over time which was not statistically significant (p=0.4). The observed differences between these groups were also statistically significant even after controlling the effects of such intervening factors as marital status, children age and the years of caring for children (p=0.001). Conclusion: Spiritual self-care training can decrease care giving strain in mothers of mentally retarded children. Therefore, strengthening their spiritual beliefs and backgrounds, mothers can greatly reduce the strain caused by care giving problems of mentally retarded children.