Menstrual Management Using a Mobile Application in Adolescent Girls With Mild Intellectual Disabilities

When the existing literature is examined, it is seen that there are limited number of studies on menstruation management education. In the studies, menstrual hygiene education was given to mentally disabled adolescent girls in small groups with model dolls or videos on social media that were not prepared by experts. Although these studies show that menstrual hygiene education given to mentally disabled students is successful, they are limited to small sample groups. For adolescent girls with intellectual disabilities, the onset of menstruation affects their independence and creates additional concerns for mothers at home, at school and in other settings. In studies conducted with mothers of adolescent girls with intellectual disabilities, mothers reported that they worried about their daughters' inability to understand menstruation, inability to change pads or dispose of them in the trash can appropriately, inability to pay attention to privacy during these special days, and that they did not send their daughters to school because they thought that they could not manage the menstruation process. Mothers' worries and fears during this process cause adolescent girls with intellectual disabilities to spend approximately one week at home every month, preventing them from socializing, negatively affecting their academic skills, further slowing their developmental processes and making it difficult for them to get used to independent life. In addition, studies show that the quality of life of both mothers and girls decreases significantly due to poor management of the menstruation process. The main aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of menstruation management training given to female adolescents with mild intellectual disabilities using a mobile application (Bağımsız Yapabilirim).