The effect of child-parent relationship therapy on divorced mothers' empathy, acception and stress levels

The purpose of this study, to investigate the effect of child-parent relationship therapy on divorced mothers' parental stress, acception and empathy. Parent Stress Scale was used to measure stress level of mothers who participated this study. Porter Parental Acceptance Scale was used to measure acceptance level of mothers. Measurement Adult-Child Interaction was used to measure empathy level of mothers. In addition to this, to understand opinions of mothers about training program, semi-structured interview form was used. There were totally 19 divorced mothers in control and experimental group. Mothers were reached via kindergardens. 10 weeks child-parent relationship therapy was carried out in Cukurova University Psychological Counseling Unit. In the analysis of quantitative variables of the study, non-parametric tests were used. Content analysis was used for analysis of quantitative data. Findings were indicated that, child-parent relationship therapy is effective to decrease parental stress level and to increase acceptance level and empathy level and thsi effect is long lasting. In addition child-parent relationship therapy seems to be helpful mothers, themselves, their childrens and relationship with their children to optain gains. Keywords: Play therapy, filial therapy, stres, acceptance, empathy, divorce.