Social support is associated with blood pressure responses in parents caring for children with developmental disabilities

Abstract

Highlights► Caregiving is associated with high blood pressure in parents.► Caregiving is associated with high stress and low social support in parents.► Social support is associated with blood pressure responses in parents.► The importance of the social support for these families was discussed. AbstractThe present study tested whether parents caring for children with developmental disabilities would have higher blood pressure compared to parents of typically developing children (controls). It also examined the psychosocial factors underlying this observation. Thirty-five parents of children with developmental disability and thirty controls completed standard measures of perceived stress, child challenging behaviours and social support and wore an ambulatory blood pressure (BP) monitor throughout the day, for one day. Relative to controls, parents caring for children with developmental disabilities reported poorer psychosocial functioning and had a higher mean systolic BP. Of the psychosocial predictors, only social support was found to be predictive. Moreover, variations in social support accounted for some of the between group differences with the β for parental group attenuated from .42 to .34 in regressionanalyses. It appears that social support may influence blood pressure responses in parental caregivers. Finally, our findings underscore the importance of providing psychosocial interventions to improve the health of family caregivers.

Enhancing social relationships through positive psychology activities: a randomised controlled trial

“…The psychological literature, spanning positive psychology, health psychology, clinical psychology, and social psychology, is replete with experimental and observational findings displaying the psychological, emotional, and social health benefits of having high quality social relationships, and conversely, the risks of social isolation (Cantwell, Muldoon, & Gallagher, 2014;Cohen, Gottlieb, & Underwood, 2000;Gallagher & Whiteley, 2012).…”

The psychophysiological impact of childhood autism spectrum disorder on siblings

“…The stress of caring for a child with a DD has also been linked with alterations in a variety of health relevant, physiological parameters. For example, perturbations in cardiovascular (Gallagher & Whiteley, 2012), neuroendocrine (Bella, Garcia, & Spadari-Bratfisch, 2011;Ruiz-Robledillo & Moya-Albiol, 2013;Seltzer et al, 2009) and immune (Gallagher, Phillips, Drayson, & Carroll, 2009;Lovell, Moss, & Wetherell, 2012) functioning have been widely implicated as plausible physiological pathways linking chronic caregiving stress with downstream disease.…”

Child problem behaviours are associated with obesity in parents caring for children with developmental disabilities

“…While this was self-report BMI and confined to parents in midlife, it seems that there is some preliminary evidence to suggest that these parents are at increased risk of being overweight. Moreover, it is worth noting that parents of children with DD have been found to have poorer endocrine functioning (Lovell et al, 2012) and higher resting blood pressure compared to control parents (Gallagher & Whiteley, 2012), which are negatively affected by obesity. Importantly, studies have also indicated that parental obesity is a significant predictor of obesity in children with intellectual disabilities highlighting the need for further research and intervention (McGillivray, McVilly, Skouteris, & Boganin, 2013).…”