A Study To Understand The Issues In Physical Health And Coping Strategies Of Parents With Disabled Child

Objective: The purpose of this study was to better understand the physical health problems faced by parents with disabled child and kind of coping strategies that the parents use to tackle their physical health problems Material and Methods:This is an observational study conducted on 30 parents having children with neuro­logical or neurodevelopmental disorders; Nordic musculoskeletal questionnaire and World Health Organization Quality of Life (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 most common pain (76.66%). On WHOQOL-BREF, Social relationship domain was observed to be the best while the 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%], whereas the least are exercises and massage [23.33%]. Conclusion: Among parents with disabled child, Low back pain and shoulder pain were the most common reported physical health problems and the main coping strategies were taking breaks and medications.