© 2015 International Journal of Educational and Psychological Researches | Published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow 246 Effectiveness of problem‑solving training, exposure therapy, and the combined method on depression, anxiety, and stress in mothers of children with special needs Mojtaba Habibi, Narges Zamani 1 , Samaneh Abedini, Nina Jamshidnejad Department of Family Therapy, Family Research Institute, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, 1 Department of Clinical Psychology, Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Hamedan, Iran Introducion A child’s disability is an experience, which involve interactions among the disabled children and family that is affected by it. [1] The diagnosis of disability probably is the most difficult experience. [2] Families either adapt effectively and plan for effective actions or show a high level of emotional stress and have ineffective reactions. [1] Child’s care needs changes of life routines, which have significant effects on family functioning. [3] The difficulties should be encountered by parents of the disabled child, have been cited as a source of anxiety, depression and family stress. [4] Parents of children with disabilities experience greater stress in comparison with a larger number of caregiving challenges, such as greater feelings of restriction, more health problems, and higher levels of parental stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms than parents of nondisabled children. [5] Mothers communicate with their children more and as a consequence experience higher levels of parenting stress. Furthermore mothers ABSTRACT Aim: This study was designed with the aim of comparing the effectiveness of three methods of cognitive‑behavioral therapy, including problem‑solving, exposure therapy, and the combined method (the combination of both methods of problem‑solving and exposure therapy) on depression, anxiety, and stress in mothers of children with special needs. Methods: Research samples consisted of 44 mothers who had children with special needs and were divided randomly into 4 groups of 11: (1) The problem‑solving group, (2) the exposure group, (3) the combined group, and (4) the control group, by the use of an experimental design with pretest and posttest. The measurement tool in this study was Laviband depression, anxiety, and stress questionnaire and the data were analyzed by descriptive statistic methods such as frequency, percentage, and standard deviation; inferential statistics methods such as covariance test and post‑hoc test least signiicant difference (LSD). Results: The results showed that all three methods were effective on improvement of both the general mental health and problems such as depression, anxiety and stress (P < 0.01). Conclusion: Based on this research and previous literature, cognitive‑behavioral therapy methods, including problem‑solving, exposure therapy, and the combined method were proved to be beneicial for mothers of children with disabilities, retardation, or other disorders, which can affect mental health.Therefore, it is strongly recommended that the above‑mentioned interventional methods are considered for these mothers. Key words: Anxiety and stress, depression, exposure therapy, problem‑solving, special needs Address for Correspondence: Prof. Mojtaba Habibi, Shahid Beheshti University, P.O. Box 1983963113, Tehran, Iran. E‑mail: mo_habibi@sbu.ac.ir Original Article Access this article online Quick Response Code: Website: www.ijeprjournal.org DOI: 10.4103/2395-2296.163931 How to cite this article: Habibi M, Zamani N, Abedini S, Jamshidnejad N. Effectiveness of problem-solving training, exposure therapy, and the combined method on depression, anxiety, and stress in mothers of children with special needs. Int J Educ Psychol Res 2015;1:246-52. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms. For reprints contact: reprints@medknow.com [Downloaded free from http://www.ijeprjournal.org on Tuesday, September 01, 2015, IP: 176.102.237.86]