The impact of the psychological resilience programme for children and adolescents on the psychological level of children who have experienced father loss

Parental loss is one of the most challenging life events that a child can experience throughout his/her life. In this context, it is very important to develop, implement and test the effectiveness of psychological resilience programs that will help children who lost their fathers to continue their lives by producing positive outcomes. This study aims to examine the impact of the Psychological Resilience Programme on children between the ages of 12-14 who have experienced father loss. The study was carried out with a total of 32 participants, 16 intervention and 16 control groups. The Resilience Programme was designed to promote some protective factors related to psychological resilience and it was applied to participants in the intervention group throughout five weeks, one session in every week. Each session took 120-150 minutes. Resiliency Attitude and Skills Profile (RASP), Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and Children Hope Scale (CHS) were used in measuring psychological reslience, strength-difficulties and hope levels of the participants. The results of the study indicated that the Resilience Programme is effective on improving the psychological resilience level of adolescents who have parental loss. In addition to this, at the end of the program, a significant decrease was detected in the total difficulties score of the intervention group. Finally, it was observed that the intervention group's posttest scores of Children Hope Scale (CHS) were significantly higher than the posttest scores of the control group, while posttest scores of the total difficulties score were significantly lower than the posttest scores of the control group. Key words: Psychological Resilience Programme, resilience, father loss