Life Skills Training Effects on Adjustment and Mental Health in Physical-Motor Disabilities

Abstract

Life Skills Training in Physical-Motor Disabled (PMD) have been rarely scrutinized in Iranian culture, which makes us to assess that comprehensively.We aimed to examine effectiveness of a life skills training (LST) on adjustment and mental health of physical-motor disabilities (PMD) people. Eleven PMD people attended 10 sessions of the LST, and were followed up for 2 months. The pre-test, post-test and follow-up adjustment and mental health of the groups were measured using Bell’s adjustment inventory, a general health questionnaire, and compared with PMD control. Significant differences were found between the experimental and control groups regarding the post-test and follow-up overall adjustment and mental health functions. There were significant increase in the post-test scores of home adjustment, follow-up scores of both health and social adjustment, and significant reductions in both post-test and follow-up signs of physical symptoms, anxiety, and insomnia, post-test signs of depression and social dysfunction and failure in the experimental group. The LST improves adjustment and mental health measures of PMD people. However, further confirmatory studies are required.