Raising a child who is mentally Retarded requires emotional
strength and flexibility. The child has special needs in addition to the
regular needs of all children, and parents can find themselves overwhelmed by
various medical, caregiving and educational responsibilities. The diagnosis of
the child can trigger a range of emotional responses in parents and across
family systems, which in turn contribute to some level of psycho-social
problems. Support from family, friends, the community, or paid caregivers is
critical to maintaining balance in the home. Parents of mentally challenged
children commonly experience a gamut of emotions over the years. The aim of the
study was to assess the coping strategies of parents of mentally retarded
children. Coping Checklist By Kiran Rao, Subukrishna and Prabhu, Coping Check
list, (1989) was used to assess the coping. In this study, 250 parents of
mentally retarded children were selected through a purposive sampling technique
from different MR centres of a selected Urban area of North India. The majority
of study subjects' coping strategies scores 99.6% which was average, and the
least was 0.4% which was good, but none of them had a poor coping strategies
score. Negative distraction, Problem solving and Acceptance/redefinition were
adopted more [(mean=3.67 & SD=1.50), (mean=6.89 & SD=1.17) and
(mean=8.22 & SD=1.99) respectively] as coping strategies among severe
mentally retarded children’s parents as compared to moderate and mild mentally
retarded children’s parents. The study concluded that there was a need for
support to parents who have severe MR. Raising an intellectually challenged
child is very demanding for parents. Health care centres must conduct
supportive group counselling for parents' emotional and social well-being.
Author(s) Details
Sapna Singh
Teerthanker Mahaveer College of Nursing, Teerthanker Mahaveer University,
Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Please see the book here :- https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/nicass/v5/6518
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