Investigating the psychological resilience of fathers with mentally handicapped children

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the psychological resilience of fathers with mentally handicapped children. The study utilized the relational survey model, which is one of the quantitative research models. The unit of analysis of the study was the fathers of children with special educational needs. "The Resilience Scale for Adults" was implemented to construct survey questionnaire and measure the psychological resilience of fathers, as the data collection tool. The study findings depict that the fathers with mentally handicapped children have the highest social competence among the 26-35 age group. The results provide that the group with the highest level of psychological resilience is the group having college or vocational school graduation grade in terms of the educational status of the participants. As for the variable of the job status of fathers, the findings postulate that the future perception level of the employed group is higher than the non-employed group. As a result of the analysis, no statistically significant relationship was found between the psychological resilience levels of total and other sub-dimensions and the total number of children in the family.