The effect of group counseling on mother's self efficacy and level of despair that they have autism children

The aim of this research is to observe the effect of group counseling on the level of despair and self-sufficiency of mothers of children with autism. The research sample consists of parents whose children with autism attend special education in Selahaddin Korkmaz Özel Eğitim İş Uygulama Okulu in Kağıthane province in İstanbul. The test and control group of the research includes 20 people in total. Out of 114 people who went through the pretest 42 people who showed results above the average concerning despair and below the average concerning self-sufficiency were chosen. These people were randomly divided into test and control groups of 10. In order to determine the despair level of mothers of children with autism "Beck Hoplessness Scale" was used. Concerning the determination of the level of self-sufficiency "General Self-sufficiency Scale" which was invented by Sherer and friends (1982) and tested on reliability and validity in Turkish by Yıldırım and İlhan (2010) was used. These scales had been applied as pre- and after-test to the control and test groups. In order to determine the difference of points between the pre- and after-tests for both the "Beck Hoplessness Scale" and "General Self-sufficiency Scale" the "Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test", posttest of the test and control groups was not statistically significant difference between despair and self-sufficiency are scores were analyzed with the Mann-Whitney test. At the end of the statistical analysis it had been observed that through the group counseling with mothers of children of autism an important difference on the level of their despair and self-sufficiency could be achieved. According to these results the despair of the parents of children of autism had been reduced while the self-sufficiency level had been increased. Key Words : Group Counseling, Autism, Despair, SelfEfficacy