Analysis of mother's level of perceived social support and attitudes of coping with stress whose children are diagnosed with special learning disability

The aim of this study is to examine the levels of perceived social support and the attitudes of coping with stress of mothers who have a child diagnosed with special learning disability and have a child without any diagnosis. Within the scope of this research the mothers, whose children are attending 12 special education and rehabilitation centers that contain special learning disability module and located in Asian side of Istanbul, were reached through purposive sampling. The mothers who belong to the conrol group are also located in Asian side of Istanbul but their children do not have any diagnosis. In the research we reached a total of 70 mothers. 35 mothers? children diagnosed with special learning disability whereas other half?s children do not have any diagnosis. The participants were asked to fill firstly Demographic Informantion Form, secondly Multidimensional Scale Of Perceived Social Support and lastly Coping with Stress Attitudes Assessment Scale. In the study we implemeted Independent Samples t Test, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Mann Whitney U for the analysis of the research variables. Data obtained from this study is evaluated by p<.05 level of significance. According to the research findings it is observed that there is a statistically significant difference between the levels of perceived social support and attitudes of coping with stress of mothers whose chidren are diagnosed with special learning disability and mothers whose children are without any diagnosis. It is found that mothers whose children are diagnosed with special learning disability more frequently use emotion focused strategies and dysfunctional strategies than mothers whose children are without any diagnosis and mothers whose children are without any diagnosis more frequently use problem focused strategies than mothers whose children are diagnosed with special learning disabilitiy. It is found that percieved family support did not make any statistically significant difference in both mothers? group. But there were significant differences in terms of friend support and speacial person support in both mothers? group.