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

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.