Effects of a social interest group intervention on self-concept and social functioning in persons with emotional disturbance and persons with mental retardation

Adler introduced the concept of social interest as the primary requisite for sound mental health. It was the contention of the present research that an improvement in mental health would result in improvement in self-concept and social functioning. This study evaluated the effect of social interest intervention, which is the teaching of compassion and concern for one's fellow human beings, on the self-concept and social functioning of those diagnosed as emotionally disturbed (ED) and those found to be mentally retarded (MR). There were three conditions: experimental, placebo, and no-treatment control. Each condition consisted of two groups: one with those diagnosed as emotionally disturbed and one with those diagnosed as mentally retarded. Both the experimental and the placebo groups met for 15 weeks. Subjects were selected by use of a table of random numbers and then were randomly assigned to groups. There were two therapists: Therapist A led the ED experimental group and the MR placebo group; therapist B led the MR experimental group and the ED placebo group.;Subjects were given assignments to find articles about a person or persons in need. The group members also were required to suggest ways in which individuals such as themselves could be of reasonable assistance to those in the articles. The assignments were to proceed from local stories to further afield, and from individuals to countries or causes.;Pretest and posttest measures were taken for all subjects on the Social Interest Scale, the Tennessee Self Concept Scale, the Social Situation Questionnaire and the Observational Emotional Inventory Factor D: Socialization, and the Observational Emotional Inventory Factor E: Self-concept. The means of the pretest scores of all conditions indicated that the groups did not differ significantly from each other. Ten hypotheses were tested: five concerned those with ED, and five concerned those with MR. The hypotheses were analyzed using a MANOVA of the change scores from pretest to posttest.;Six of the hypotheses were not significant and were rejected. The data for these were obtained with self-administered tests. Of the ten hypotheses tested, four produced significant results and were accepted. The accepted hypotheses were based on the observational rating scales.