ABSTRACT
The importance of paying attention to children’s psychological health, in general, and the children under the coverage of the Welfare Organization, in specific, is considered inevitable as one of the determinants of the society’s and the forthcoming generations’ general health. Thus, the present study tries investigating and comparing the psychological health status, emotions and cognitive transformation of the children held in foster centers associated with Yazd Province’s Welfare Organization with those of the ordinary children. The study population included 122 foster family and normal family children. The data related to the psychological health were compiled using GHQ-28 questionnaire and the data pertinent to the emotions and cognitive transformation of the children were collected, respectively, through analyzing their paintings and Royer’s Draw-A-Person (DAP) test. All the gathered data were subjected to analysis in SPSS software. The study results indicated that the psychological health and emotions are significantly different in children raised by foster families and normal families (P=0.001&0.002); but, no significant difference was document between the children raised by foster families and those raised in normal families in terms of the cognitive transformation level.
