The Effect of Parent School Counseling Programs on Anxiety, Depression and Quality of Life

Abstract

Parental anxiety and depression are factors that significantly affect the practice of parental role and have an impact on the upbringing of children and their quality of life. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the counseling intervention that parents received during their participation in parent school programs reduced stress and depressive symptoms and improved their quality of life. A sample of 160 parents was collected from two independent groups: the experimental group consisting of 80 parents who participated in the program and the control group consisting of parents who after being informed about the implementation of the programs in their schools decided not to participate. The psychometric tools have been used are: The Spielberger Stress Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), the Beck depression Inventory (BDI), and the Health and well-being Questionnaire (The RAND 36-Item Healthy Survey, SF-36, Version 1.0). The results of the research confirmed the research hypothesis according to which the effect of the counseling intervention on the parents who participated in the parent schools affected the reduction of the stress index, state anxiety (Ζ=-2,882, p=0,004) and trait anxiety (Ζ=-3,776, p<0,001), the reduction of the depression index (Ζ=-6,876, p<0,001) and the improvement of their quality of life(Ζ=-5,364, p<0,001) ) especially of physical health (Ζ=-4,529, p<0,001) and emotional health (Ζ=-4,529, p<0,001).