Level of Stress and Coping Strategies Seen Among Parents of Neonates Admitted in NICU

Abstract

Aim To assess the level of stress and coping strategies in parents of neonates admitted in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at a tertiary care centre in North India. Materials and methods It was a descriptive/observational cross-sectional study of 3 year duration with a sample size of 224. All parents willing to participate and who could understand English or Hindi were included in the study after the informed consent. Stress levels and coping strategies were assessed using a validated questionnaire between 2nd to 7th day of admission. Demographic data was collected and parental stress and coping was quantified using likert scale. The data was analyzed using SPSS Version 20.0. Results Most of the parents were moderately stressed (93.3%). The most impactful stress domain was ‘Emotional’ and the most impactful question out of that domain was ‘constant fear of child’s recovery’. Of all the coping strategies, cognitive strategy was mostly used by parents. There was a negative correlation between stress and coping strategies (r = –0.09) but the result was statistically insignificant (p-value = 0.16). Of all the demographic variables, the birth order of the baby was significantly related to stress (p-value < 0.05), while parent’s education, monthly family income and area of residence were significantly related to coping (p-value < 0.05, <0.05 and <0.001, respectively). Conclusion Most of the parents were moderately stressed, with cognitive strategy being the most used by parents as the coping mechanism.

Stress and Coping Strategies among Mothers for Caring Premature Infant at Home

“…In each subscale, most of the responses are in the classification of good coping strategies. The results of this study differ from previous studies, which stated that most mothers are in the moderate coping category (Gurgani & Jogi, 2018;Patil, 2014;Paul et al, 2018;Sharma, 2019), and there is one study that gives the result that most respondents have poor coping strategies (Rajalakshmi & Mothers for Caring Premature Infant at Home Kalavathi, 2017). The results of this study can be explained as follows: the results of this study are mostly maternal stress in the moderate category, so the coping strategies of praying, getting closer to the baby, accepting the situation, and seeking support are in the good category.…”

“…Currently, the identification of stress and coping strategies mothers use still focuses a lot on when the baby is in the NICU (Gurgani & Jogi, 2018;Patil, 2014;Paul et al, 2018;Rajalakshmi & Kalavathi, 2017Sharma, 2019Tajalli et al, 2022). In contrast, stress and coping strategies for mothers when caring for premature babies at home are still under-researched (de Castro Pereira et al, 2019).…”

The Stress Levels of Premature Infants’ Parents and Related Factors in NICU

“…Similarly, Syamsu et al (2021) mentioned that almost all mothers found their experience with their premature baby in the hospital extremely stressful (97.1%). Meanwhile, Pathak et al (2022) reported that the majority of parents experienced moderate stress (93.3%).…”

Stress and stressors experienced by the parents of high‐risk neonates admitted in neonatal intensive care unit: Systematic review and meta‐analysis evidence available from India

“…Twelve studies have reported that others experienced severe stress (Agrawal & Gaur, 2016;Ashwani et al, 2017;Chourasia et al, 2013;Das & Krishna, 2020;Ganguly et al, 2020;Kumar & Mallick, 2020;Mulla & Patel, 2021;Niranjan et al, 2015;Patil, 2014;Rai & Rani, 2019;Reetha, 2020;Varma et al, 2019). Five studies have reported that mothers experienced a moderate level of stress (Sheeba & Prabhu T, 2019;Gurgani & Jogi, 2018;Rajalakshmi & Kalavathi, 2017;Sharma, 2019;Sidhu, 2016).…”

“…Mothers who directly breastfed their babies had significantly lower stress than mothers who did not (Chourasia et al, 2013). Studies have highlighted that the age of mothers, education, occupation, monthly incomes of family, birth order of child and type of family (Patil, 2014;Sharma, 2019;Sidhu, 2016;Vinod, 2017), religion, number of children (Rajalakshmi & Kalavathi, 2017), number of days of hospitalisation, and maternal occupation have significantly associated with on mothers' stress (Reetha, 2020). Mothers had severe stress in the physiological domain, emotional domain and cognitive domain (Gurgani & Jogi, 2018;Reetha, 2020;Sidhu, 2016).…”