Mental Health of Parents Having Children with Physical Disabilities

Background: Parents of children with disabilities play an essential role in the successfulrehabilitation of their children. However, the high level of care required mayaffect the mental health of the parents and consequently contribute to anunfavorable rehabilitation outcome in their children. The aims of this studyare to investigate the mental health of parents of children with physical disabilitiesand to elucidate the factors affecting parental mental health.Method: This was a cross-sectional study. Ninety-one parents of children with physicaldisabilities who visited the outpatient rehabilitation clinics of a tertiaryhospital were invited to join the study. Data from the parents and childrenwere recorded during face-to-face interviews. Parental- perceived stress wasassessed using the simplified Parenting Stress Index (PSI/SF). Parental mentalhealth was evaluated as the main outcome measure using the 12-item versionof the Chinese Health Questionnaire (CHQ-12).Results: Forty parents (44%) were categorized as psychiatric cases on the CHQ.Child-related factors that negatively affected parental mental health werepoor walking ability (p < 0.05), dependency on others to perform activities ofdaily life (ADL) (p < 0.01), and younger age (p < 0.05). Parent-related factorsthat negatively affected parental mental health were low income (p <0.05), no religious beliefs (p < 0.01), high level of parental distress (p <0.01), parent-child dysfunctional interaction (p < 0.01), and having difficultchild (p < 0.05). The most significant predictor of overall parental mentalhealth in multivariate analysis was found to be parental distress.Conclusions: Parents of children with physical disabilities were at risk of poor mentalhealth. Perceived parental distress is the most important factor affectingparental mental health. Strategies to reduce parental stress should be developedto prevent deterioration of parental mental health.