Stress Resilience as The Function of Need Level in Mothers of Hearing Impaired Children

Over the last several decades, resilience has been studied extensively. Most definition include two key elements: 1) exposure to adverse or traumatic circumstances; and 2) successful adaptation following exposure. Maslow (1954) posited a hierarchy of human needs based on two groupings-deficiency and growth needs. A natural outcome of this theory of need hierarchy is that since stress resilience is such an ability of an individual which inculcates at the fertile ground of growth needs i.e., cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualization, and self-transcendence, an individual dominated by these growth needs can be expected to be high stress resilient. A final sample of 30 mothers with hearing disabled child and dominated by growth needs and 30 mothers with hearing disabled child and dominated by deficiency needs were selected randomly from larger sample based on scores on Need Level Test (Ajawani, 2009). These mothers were administered Stress Resistance Scale (Ajawani & Varwandkar, 2010). The findings revealed that mothers of hearing disabled children and dominated by growth needs showed higher stress resilience than those dominated by deficiency needs.