Parental stress in mothers of children and adolescents with cerebral palsy

Abstract

Objectivesto evaluate parental stress of mothers of children and adolescents with cerebral palsy; to verify whether parental stress undergoes variations according to the level of motor compromise, the child's phase of life, and sociodemographic variables.Methoda cross-sectional, descriptive study, with 223 mothers of children and adolescents with cerebral palsy.Results45.3% of the mothers presented high levels of stress; there were differences in stress between mothers of children with mild and severe motor impairment; mothers of older children were more stressed than mothers of younger children and of adolescents; paid work and leisure activities reduced the stress.Conclusionmothers of children and adolescents with cerebral palsy, whose children present mild to severe motor impairment are vulnerable to parental stress. Paid work and leisure activities were the factors that contributed most to reducing the stress.

Parental Stress and Social Support of Caregivers of Children With Cerebral Palsy

“…The considerations above are even more worrisome in the case of the investigated sample, given the high levels of parental stress it exhibited, agreeing with the findings reported by Dang et al (2015) and Ribeiro et al (2014). Almost half of the participants have stress levels requiring clinical evaluation and probably need therapy assistance.…”

“…One further aspect that warrants attention is that almost half of the participants lived in towns outside the Belém Metropolitan Area, which implies the need to travel, with consequent financial, physical, and/or emotional costs. Financial difficulties and a low educational level may be hindrances to a more effective social integration of the child and his or her family and may restrict access to only certain healthcare services and the purchasing of equipment to facilitate accessibility and communication (Ribeiro et al, 2014). This situation is even more serious because we found that more than half of the children had severe motor impairment.…”

“…One of the mechanisms for such attenuation to occur is to make available social support and orientation on how to access formal support networks. In this manner, family resources are boosted, and other resources become accessible (Ribeiro et al, 2014).…”

“…There is little agreement in the literature regarding the relationship between the child's motor functioning and the parents' stress and/or health (Byrne et al, 2010;Guyard et al, 2011;Ribeiro et al, 2014). Byrne et al (2010) and Ribeiro et al (2014) find results similar to those of the present study and argue that these findings reinforce the idea that the impairments to health and quality of life seem to depend more on how the child's family copes with adverse situations and organizes itself as a system, in addition to the resources available to it, than on the child's disability itself.…”

“…According to the literature, caregivers of children with CP generally exhibit impairments in physical and mental health; however, there is little agreement regarding the relationship between such impairments and the child's degree of motor deficiency (Al-Gamal & Long, 2013;Byrne, Hurley, Daly, & Cunningham, 2010;Ribeiro, Sousa, Vandenberghe, & Porto, 2014). This lack of agreement suggests that other variables in addition to those directly related to the child and his or her disability influence the mutual adjustment between parents and children (Dantas et al, 2012;Glenn, Cunningham, Poole, Reeves, & Weindling, 2009;Guyard et al, 2011).…”