A Cross Sectional Study into the Frequency of Depression in Mothers with Children that Have Disability

Methodology: Total of 122 mothers of children having disabilities of Global developmental delay (GDD), Intellectual disability (ID), Cerebral palsy (CP) and syndromes were included in this study. Ethical approval was obtained as was family consent. A wide rand of factors were used to assess disability included age of mothers, educational levels, occupation of both parents, total number of children, number of disabled children, socioeconomic status, family setup and residential area of family. Age and type of disability of child and their independence level in daily activities were also noted. The BECK depression inventory (BDI) was used to detect depression in mothers. All the information was collected using a standardized performa and data was analyzed by using SPSS version 21. Objective: To describe the frequency of maternal depression and associated factors in families having children with different disabilities. Results: A total of 122 mothers had 63.9% male children with male to female ratio of 2:1. The mean and SD of children with disability and mothers age is 1.96 (+/- 0.686) and 2.70 (+/- 0.677) respectively. Majority were of average socioeconomic status (42.5%). Most of mothers were educated above matriculation level (56.6%), house wives (80.3%), had total 2-4 children (86.4%), one disabled child (74.6%). Mostly fathers were also educated above matriculation (74.6%). Significant families were from combined family setup (60.7%) and living in urban areas (63.1%). The included children were diagnosed mainly with intellectual disability (32%), Global development delays (30.3%), CP (22.1%) and other learning disability syndromes (15.6%). 75.4% children had single disability while 24.6% had a combination of two or more. 65.6% of mothers were diagnosed with moderate level depression, 21.2% mild and 13.1% severe. (TABLE 1). Age groups of both mother and kids, socioeconomic status, parental education, mothers occupation and type of disability of the participants wer