Ab. No. 92 A Study to Understand the Issues in Physical Health and Coping Strategies of Parents With Disabled Child

Abstract

Introduction: Observational study to find out the major physical health problems faced by parents with disabled child and to determine how parents with disabled child cope, and what kind of coping strategies they use to tackle their physical health problems. Methods: This study was conducted on 30 parents having children with neurological or neurodevelopmental disorders. Nordic musculoskeletal questionnaire and WHOQOL-BREF were administered to measure physical health and their Quality of life respectively. Parents were asked to attend one scheduled face to face interview designed to gather information regarding their coping strategies that are used to tackle their physical health problems. Results: According to Nordic musculoskeletal questionnaire, Low back pain and shoulder pain was the commonest sites of pain (76.66%). On WHOQOL-BREF, Social relationship domain was observed to be the best while physical domain had the lowest score. The main coping strategy used by the parents is taking a break [73.33%] followed by undertaking medications like pain killers [43.33%], but least dependency on doing exercises and massage [23.33%]. Conclusion: Majority of the subjects were having low back pain and shoulder pain. And the main coping strategies used by parents is taking a break followed by undertaking medications like pain killers but least aware on doing exercises. Implications: Physiotherapy education can be planned to provide physical support to the caregivers to ease the burden if any through collaborative efforts. Based on our findings most of the parents suffered from back pain and shoulder pain, Mothers should avoid positions bringing load onto the low back during exercises with rehabilitation purposes, training for transport of the child should be given to mothers, and rendering the child as independent as possible in their daily activities must be supported.