ARTICLE INFO

Article Type

Original Research

Authors

Ghasemi   M. (*)
Gholami   A. (1)
Mehdizadeghan   I. (1)






(*) Educational Psychology Department, Educational Sciences & Psychology Faculty, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran
(1) Psychology Department, Educational Sciences & Psychology Faculty, Khorasghan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran

Correspondence

Address: Educational Sciences & Psychology Faculty, Kharazmi University, South Mofateh Avenue, Enghelab Avenue, Tehran, Iran
Phone: +98 (21) 44899656
Fax: -
ghasemi_m12@yahoo.com

Article History

Received:  February  14, 2017
Accepted:  July 19, 2017
ePublished:  November 6, 2017

BRIEF TEXT


Physical disabilities and the resulting psychological complications are one of the manifestations that are widespread in the scenes of war and subsequent years in the survivors of war and their surroundings. Meanwhile, veterans' spouses are particularly involved in the complications of physical and mental disabilities [1].

Research findings have shown that spouses of veterans are more likely to be exposed to mental health threats [1, 2]. … [3]. Stress and resilience are two variables that emphasize mental health research [4-7]. Many factors can change the negative effects of stress of prevent some of the effects that can endanger your health [8]. The important point is that there is a significant relationship between perceived stress and general health [9, 10]. Resilience is one of the effective factors in the field of psychology of transformation, family and mental health, which is emphasized by positive psychology [11]. … [12-15]. Research findings have confirmed the positive relationship between resilience and optimism [16], hope to life [17], quality of life [18], and psychological well-being [19]. Also, there is a negative relationship between resilience and stress [20], resilience and anxiety indicators [21], and resilience and anxiety [22]. … [23-25]. Research findings support the positive role of forgiving on mental health. Among them, Bakus has argued that the ability to forgive a spouse can lead to an improvement in relationships and increase marital satisfaction [26]. The ability to forgive can be effective in individual self-efficacy, the generalization of forgiveness to new conditions, the ability to control stress and anger [27]. … [28-38].

Due to the lack of research on forgiveness and resilience and perceived stress, especially among veterans' families, further studies are needed in this area. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effect of forgiveness-based intervention on resilience and perceived stress of veterans' wives.

This research is semi-experimental and applied with pretest and posttest design with control group.

This study was conducted in summer of 2016 among 807 wives of veterans who used the consulting services and psychology of the Isfahan Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs.

Delaware has set the minimum sample size of 15 in the causal and experimental research [39]. Accordingly, 40 persons (in two groups of 20) from veterans' wives were selected by convenience sampling method. To this end, women who have benefited from the counselling and psychology services of the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs were asked to collaborate in research if they wish. Of the volunteers, 40 who were most eligible were selected and randomly assigned into two groups of control and experimental. The minimum common life between couples was 10 years, and each family had two children and more. The criteria for entry into the research were full presence in all sessions, and lack of psychiatric history or specific disease.

The tools used in the research were Conor and Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) [40, 41], and Cohen's Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-14) [42-44]. After the necessary coordination with management of the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs of the Isfahan and obtaining written permission, the stage of the research began. Following the selection of subjects, the pretest was performed according to the requirements set out in each questionnaire. After randomly assigning the participants in the experimental group and control group (20 in each group), first, both groups participated in the pretest. In pretest, dependent variables of perceived stress and resilience were measured. Then, the independent variable, which was group training was presented in eight training sessions in accordance with the protocol developed for experimental group (Table 1). Finally, the posttest was performed. The executive instruction was set up on an hourly basis and based on the book “forgiveness of a choice”. Park first developed this protocol and used it in his research. He expressed the face validity of the protocol as acceptable [45]. In Iran, this protocol has been used in the research of Lavafpour et al. [46]. A course instructor had a master's degree in counseling and a five-year experience in counseling and cooperation centers with the welfare organization, the Justice, and Foundation of Martyrs. In order to ensure the consent of the participants, they were asked to confirm the voluntary consent. Also, participants in the research were assured that their information would be kept confidential. Levine test was used to examine the homogeneity of the variance of variables of resilience and perceived stress and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to evaluate the normal distribution of scores. The univariate covariance analysis was used to compare the mean scores of the variables of resilience and perceived stress. Data analysis was performed using SPSS 22 software.

The mean age of subjects was 38.21±6.75 years. In the experimental group, there was a significant difference between the mean scores of resilience and perceived stress in the pretest and posttest stages (p<0.01). Also, there was a significant difference between the posttest and control group (p<0.01). Therefore, the effect of teaching forgiveness in form of group teaching was significant after the control of the pretest effect on the variables of resiliency and perceived stress (p<0.01) and Eta's coefficients for resiliency variables and perceived stress were 0.62 and 0.71 respectively that indicated a high estimate of the difference in the experimental group (Table 2).

The present study confirmed the effectiveness of forgiveness intervention on increasing resiliency of veterans' wives. These results are consistent with earlier findings that the effectiveness of teaching forgiveness is in line with the reduction of anger, hostile documents, and increased empathy [32], increasing positive emotions [33, 34], and the reduction of characteristic anger [27]. The findings of Harris et al. confirm the effect of teaching forgiveness on increasing the ability to control anger [27], and Rahimpour et al. confirm the effect of teaching forgiveness on reducing anger and increasing empathy [37].

Improving the quality of the protocols can be a useful research topic for conducting research in the field. Also, considering the findings of the research and considering the specific circumstances of the veterans' families, it is suggested that in counseling and psychological counseling centers for these people, teaching forgiveness in order to improve the quality of life be used. Also, the effect of teaching forgiveness on different groups of participants with common psychological stress management feature such as families with amputees, single parent family, addiction, etc. need to be investigated.

The limitations of this research were the impossibility of controlling the personality of characteristics of the subjects, they type of injury and economic situation due to the limited resources of the researcher. This research was also conducted in a sample of veterans' wives, which reduces the external validity of the research.

Teaching forgiveness in group-based teaching is effective in increasing the resilience and reducing the perceived stress of veterans' wives, and this method can be effective in reducing the psychological harm of these families.

Thanks to the wives of the veterans in the research and all those who provided the opportunity to do this research.

Non-declared

At the beginning of the research, the written consent of the participants was provided by distributing and collecting written consent. It was also assured of the confidentiality of the information from other ethical considerations observed in this study. Participants who were interested in receiving research results were informed by email through the results. Conflict of interest

The financial credibility of this research has been provided by the authors.

TABLES and CHARTS

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