Effectiveness of Motivational Psychotherapy on Depression and Anxiety of mothers of Childrens with Learning Disabilities

Introduction: The importance of psychological interventions to reduce depression and anxiety of mothers of children with learning disabilities is essential. It seems that one of the effective interventions is motivation-based psychotherapy. Aim: The study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of motivational psychotherapy on depression and anxiety of mothers of children with learning disabilities. Method: The research method was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population of this research was made up of all the mothers of children with learning disabilities in the city of Zabul in the academic year of 2021-2022 who had files in the rehabilitation center for children with special learning difficulties of Shahid Salvatian in Zabul (65 people). Among them, 40 people were selected by the available sampling method and randomly placed in two experimental (20 people) and control (20 people) groups. Lavibond & Lavibond psychological symptoms questionnaire (1995) and Sahebdel's motivational psychotherapy training (2018) were the research tools. To analyze the data, the analysis of covariance test was used in SPSS-26 software. Results: The findings indicate that motivational psychotherapy is effective on depression (F=83.92; P<0.001) and anxiety (F=149.81; P<0.001) of mothers of students with learning disabilities and reduces Depression and anxiety. Conclusion: According to the results, motivational psychotherapy was effective on depression and anxiety of mothers of children with learning disabilities; Therefore, it is suggested to use motivational psychotherapy in order to reduce depression and anxiety of mothers of children with learning disabilities.