Mental Health and Quality of Life of Adolescents with Physical, Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: Perspectives of Parents and Children

From preparing for school examinations, to having enough cash for the Eras Tour concert, to keeping up with a Snapchat streak with friends, adolescence can be an exciting, yet challenging time. Adolescents' quality of life can be shaped by many personal, familial, and community factors. Parents may also find it challenging just to know whether their teens' needs and desires are being met. In this book, Gajdzica et al. explore quality of life factors of 98 parent-adolescent dyads in Poland. The 3 groups of adolescents studied are: teens with intellectual disabilities, teens with physical disabilities, and adolescents with disabilities related to Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). This book is 1 of a 6-book series addressing key issues affecting the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents, reviewing preventive strategies, promoting positive behaviors, and sharing the latest research to aid development of evidence-based treatments. This is an in-depth research study where adolescent-parent dyads completed a series of standardized measures analyzing health-related quality-of-life factors, both self-rated and rated by their parents. These included physical and psychological well-being, autonomy, family functioning, school, peer support, etc. Interestingly, many adolescents in the study rated their own health lower than their parents rated it. Personal resources such as disability acceptance, lifestyle, and ego-resiliency were significantly associated with health-related quality of life in these teens, whereas other social resources varied in importance. The study was conducted in recent years and includes modern context such as living through the COVID-19 pandemic and a likelihood of using social media daily. The study population is also interesting as some Polish participants had their quality of life affected by the recent Ukraine-Russia war. The literature review and statistical analysis performed for this study were extensive. Because of its dense language and robust statistical analysis, we would not call this book a “page-turner.” Perhaps the addition of qualitative interviews from some of these parent-adolescent dyads would have added interesting perspectives and improved this text's engagement factor. The text recognizes and addresses this limitation by explaining that the study was planned during the pandemic and so online surveys were the most practical means of data collection. In addition, from a study design perspective, the representation of some important topics such as sexual health is lacking. In addition, the study population was entirely Polish significantly limiting its generalizability to other cultures and nationalities. Finally, the sample size was small, particularly the FASD dyads. The study included 26 adolescents with an intellectual disability and their parents, 61 adolescents with physical disability-parent dyads, and 11 adolescents with FASD-parent dyads. These limitations are acknowledged. We would recommend this book for professionals who are looking for insight into the personal and social factors that influence the quality of life of teens with disabilities and their families. Clinicians and researchers across disciplines will appreciate both its extensive analysis and literature review. Individuals with intellectual, physical, and developmental disabilities themselves and their families are not the main audience for this rather dense text. Ultimately, this book provides a good contribution to the literature by illuminating factors that influence quality of life among teens with disabilities and their families. This work provides important insights from the lived experience of the disability community.