Burden of care and mental health of informal caregivers of children with developmental disabilities in Sub-Saharan Africa: the moderating role of resilience

Abstract

Caregivers play the most important role in the care of children with developmental challenges. The care received by children with developmental disabilities from caregivers is essential and indispensable as these children will not function well without such care. However, caregiver characteristics and factors internal to the caregivers, such as their state of mental health or ability to adapt to caregiving stress, may impact the quality of care that they give to these children and require attention. Therefore, we investigated the unique contributions of resilience and burden of care on the mental health of informal caregivers of children with developmental disabilities (N = 228, 165 females, 63 males, mean age = 27.85, SD = 10.02) aged between 16 to 67 years old. Additionally, we examined whether resilience would moderate the association between the burden of care and mental health. The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, Zarit Burden Interview, and General Health Questionnaire were used to collect data from the caregivers. The data were then analysed using Pearson correlation and the Hayes PROCESS module in SPSS 27. The results indicated that burden of care was negatively associated with mental health, while resilience was positively associated with mental health. The result further indicated that resilience did not significantly moderate the association between the burden of care and mental health. The study concludes that resilience is a potential protective factor for the mental health of caregivers and should be the target of interventions that seek to improve the quality of care for children with developmental disabilities.