Some sources of stress found in mothers of spina bifida children.

Maternal mental health in families of children with spina bifida

“…In our study, less than 10% of SB children were from single-parent families as reported elsewhere, [9,11] but it was much lower than 15%-52%. [8,[12][13][14][15][16][17] Our SB children showed less severe physical disability, which was comparable to those recruited from hospitals and registries [8,11,16] and those performed in the 1970s. [9,15,18] There are limitations in generalizing the results in the community as more severe patients were recruited from tertiary centers.…”

“…In the present study, child's functional skills (communication, daily living skills, socialization or motor domains) were not associated with poor maternal mental health. Tew et al [15] reported that child's physical disability was a source of maternal stress, our study as well as other studies did not find any association between physical disability and parental adjustment, [9,[11][12][13]17] which may be due to improved care and psychosocial support for SB children and their families over the decade. Moreover lack of standardization in measuring disease severity in SB children is another factor.…”

“…Nevertheless, a control group is necessary when GHQ-12 is used in the clinical setting locally. The difference in effect size between SB and controls in this and other studies need to be interpreted with care, as it would vary depending on whether the control group comprises children with chronic illnesses, [10] normal means [12][13][14][15][16] or normal children from the same community. [8,11,17] Another confounding factor preventing direct comparison is the variability in the characteristics of the SB population among studies.…”

“…We used a standardized measure of adaptive skills, [17] but other studies used the level of lesion, [12][13][14]16] functional limitations such as ambulatory status, bowel and bladder incontinence, [9,[14][15] treatment intensity in terms of hospitalization and number of shunt revision, [12,14] or standardized measures of physical [16] or cognitive skills. [9,15,17] There have been attempts to quantify severity using scoring systems based on some of the mentioned physical characteristics. [9,12,14,16,17] However, when the level of the lesion is thought to be correlated well with ambulatory status, there is little correlation with other parameters.…”

A cost‐benefit analysis of prenatal diagnosis for neural tube defects selectively offered to relatives of index cases

“…It was estimated that the proportion of SB children requiring special education was 27.5% [17]. This could be an underestimate based on earlier reports [16,18], but it is assumed to reflect improved neonatal care.…”