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Effects of recreational therapy on emotional adjustment of students with intellectual disabilities


Ezgi Ertüzün
Hasan Daşkiran

Abstract

Emotional adjustment behaviours of individuals with mild intellectual disabilities were not adequately measured after a therapeutic recreation intervention. This qualitative experimental research aimed to determine the effect of a recreational therapy programme on the emotional adjustment of individuals with intellectual disabilities at Meram Melike Hatun Special Education Vocational School in Konya, Turkey between March 2019 and May 2019. Thirty-four parents of students with intellectual disabilities were recruited. The participating parents were allocated to an experimental group (n=17) or a control group (n=17). Demographic characteristics of the participants were collected with a personal information form developed based on relevant literature. The Hacettepe Emotional Adjustment Scale (HEAS) was used to collect emotional adjustment data. A pretest–post-test experimental design was used. Therapeutic recreation was applied in 16 sessions as 2 sessions per week, presented by the researchers and each lasting about 1 hour. No significant difference was found between the post-test HEAS total and sub-dimension mean scores in the experimental and control groups (p>0.05). HEAS measurements in the experimental and control groups revealed no significant difference in total and sub-dimension scores (p>0.05). Our study suggests that implementing therapeutic recreation activities in 16 sessions is insufficient, with longer-term programmes required to solve problems of emotional adjustment.


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eISSN: 2960-2386
print ISSN: 0379-9069