Parental Burnout and the Personality of Mothers of Children with Central Auditory Processing Disorders (APD)

Introduction: Parental burnout is the condition related to emotional and/or physical exhaustion caused by excessive chronic stress experienced as a parent. Parental burnout is personality-conditioned, and, in the first place, it is related to higher neuroticism. Co-occurrence of other personality traits with parental burnout depends on the characteristics of the studied population of parents and cultural conditionings. Research Aim: Assessment of the intensity of parental burnout in mothers of children with central auditory processing disorder (APD) compared to mothers of children with disabilities as well as investigation of its relation to the Big Five personality traits and the sociodemographic factors. Methods: The study involved 75 mothers of children with APD. Questionnaires used included the Parental Burnout Measure (PBM-12), the Short IPIP-BFM-20 Questionnaire for measuring the Big Five personality, and the Data Collection Survey. Results: The results show that the level of parental burnout in mothers of children with APD is generally similar to that in mothers of children with various impairments. However, its intensity in the dimension of emotional exhaustion is significantly lower. Three personality traits may have a protective function: (higher) emotional stability, conscientiousness and extraversion, and agreeableness in relation to feelings of helplessness. Emotional stability was found to be a predicting factor for parental burnout, while (higher) agreeableness allows only predicting (lower) helplessness experienced by mothers of children with APD. Conclusions: Mothers of children with APD experiencing parental burnout should have access to different forms of psychological intervention that would allow them to increase their parental resources, especially those conditioned by emotional stability, as well as those related to conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness.