Marriage satisfaction of orthopedically disabled spouses: Yalova case

In the field of disability welfare, the scarcity of studies on the marital life of people with disabilities is remarkable. In addition, news about the marriages of people with disabilities and individuals who become disabled after marriage due to illness or accident has been increasing in social media and printed media. Among this news, news about orthopedically disabled individuals' marriages is more common. The aim of this research is to determine how individuals with orthopaedic disabilities express their marital life experiences, attitudes towards marriage, family and social environment relations, satisfaction from marriage, and whether they need professional support in this process to enable society to reach realistic information about the marital life of orthopedically disabled individuals, and in this context, various to develop recommendations. In order to achieve this aim, the phenomenological method, one of the qualitative research designs, which adopts an approach to discover the meanings attributed by individuals or groups to a social or human problem to reveal and understand experiences, had been used. The research population consists of orthopedically disabled married individuals residing within the borders of Yalova province. The research sample has been determined by the snowball technique, which is the most widely used among the purposeful sampling methods. The research sample consists of 19 orthopedically disabled couples. Research data were obtained through face-to-face interviews using a semi-structured interview form between 01 June 2021 and 31 December 2021. Methodologically, inductive coding, was followed in the analysis of the data. Data were analyzed using the Max Qualitative Data Analysis (MAXQDA 2022) program. As a result of the research it has been understood that individuals with orthopaedic disabilities explain their marital life and satisfaction with marriage affirmative. One of the most important results of the research is that especially the participants with a disability before marriage face rejecting attitudes from their root family members when they want to marry a disabled person. Participants who experience disability both before and after marriage have been searching for satisfaction by accepting the reality of the conditions they live in rather than being emotional about their marital life and marital satisfaction. Another result of the research is that the majorities of participants stated that the marriage and family counsellors could not provide them with sufficient support on issues specific to the disabled. In this context, it is requested that marriage and family counselling programs have developed to include topics specific to the disabled. Another result obtained is that the negative attitudes of society towards the marriage of the disabled are due to incomplete or insufficient information. It is beneficial to develop protective-preventive, developer-supportive programs in social work practices and pieces of training. Keywords: Social work, Orthopaedic disability, Family, Marriage, Marriage counseling