The intermediory role of mindful attention awareness between mother's reflective functioning and alexithymia charecteristics

In this study, it was aimed to look at the intermediary role of mindfulness between mothers' reflective functioning and alexithymic characteristics. The sample of the study consisted of 506 mothers who had children.In the thesis study, relational screening model which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used.In order for the sample to be representative of the universe, only women/mothers who have children were taken as the criteria when choosing the sample, and criteria such as having a child of a certain age, living in a certain province, having a certain education level were not determined. Personal Information Form, Reflective Functioning Scale, Mindful Attention Awareness Scale and Turkish TAS-20 Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) were used as data collection tools. As a result of the study, it was determined that mindfulness has a intermediary role between reflective peeing and alexithymic characteristics of mothers. In the study, it was investigated whether the variables of reflective functions (mentalization skills), alexithymic characteristics and mindfulness differ according to the demographic characteristics of the participants. As a result of the findings, it was found that the reflective functionality, alexithymia and mindfulness levels of the participants differed according to demographic variables. In the literature, no study was found in which these variables were used together with mothers. For this reason, this study will pave the way for the work to be done with mothers, so it will serve the field of child mental health and protective, preventive and supportive studies. Key Words: Reflective function, mentalization, mother, mindfulness, alexithymia