The purpose of this research was to investigate effect of horticultural therapy on the living function and sociality, mentality, emotional behavior of students with mental retardation.
Quasi-experimental research, which is one group test parted with p...
The purpose of this research was to investigate effect of horticultural therapy on the living function and sociality, mentality, emotional behavior of students with mental retardation.
Quasi-experimental research, which is one group test parted with pre, middle, post stage, was designed to this study. The independent variable includes horticultural program; dependent variables including evaluation of living function, sociality, mentality, emotional behavior characteristic, and horticultural activity. The experiment was accomplished to 14 retarded students except dropouts (average age: 20.8 years) in J special school for 3 months twice a week divided into pre, middle, post stage, in order to investigate the effect of horticultural therapy. All collected data were analyzed with using SPSS 12.0 windows. In this study, general characteristics were showed into real number and percentage and repeated measured ANOVA test was performed to analyze dependent variables.
As a result that measured the effect of horticultural therapy on living function of students with mental retardation, all sub-domains of behavioral abilities, psycho-social abilities, activities of daily living, and physical abilities showed to be so effective that life habit of mental retarded students got changed for the better, their language expression was to be ample, and capacity of responsibility became increased. A result that measured social, mental, emotional behavior characteristic of students with mental retardation showed elevation of psychosocial behavior, but there was no difference in emotional behavior characteristic.
In conclusion, horticultural therapy affects a positive influence on living function and psychosocial behavior of mentally retarded students, and also the development of long-term and systematic horticultural therapy program is required for emotional behavior characteristic.