THE PROBLEMS EXPERIENCED BY FAMILIES WITH DISABLED CHILDREN

Objective: the purpose of this descriptive study is to find out the problems experienced by the families with disabled children. methods: the study was conducted on families of disabled children who were attending to a rehabilitation center for mentally ill children in manisa province of turkey. research sample included 106 family of disabled children who were attending to the rehabilitation center. a 28-item questionnaire which was developed by authors was used to collect data. results and conclusion: the mean age of the disabled children was 9.5±4.2 and 75.5% of them were mentally disabled. the mean number of children in the families was 2.9±1.2. of the families 26.4 percent had another disabled child and 17.9 percent had consanguineous marriage. nearly all of the the cregivers of disabled children (93.4%) were their first degree relatives. the problems that was stated by the families with disabled children were “lack of somebody’s support for the care of their disabled child (88.7%)”, “concerns about the future of the child (82.1%)”, “disharmony in the family (50.9%)”, “life-limiting impact of disability (49.1%)”, “difficulties in treating health problems of disabled child (42.5%)”, “additional expense for caring their disabled child (25.5%)”, “family members blaming each other for the disability (17.9%)”. in that study it has seen that the variables such as “age of mother”, “age of father”, “household income level” “gender of disabled child”, “to be accompanied by additional expense”, “to have support for caring disabled children”, “to be congenital or acquired”, “disability type” and “the time diagnosing the disability” have only minor impact on difficulty and problems that was experienced by families in the care of their disabled children. it has found that the variables, “to have another disabled child” decrease family members blaming each other for the disability and “additional expenses” increase difficulties in treating health problems of disabled child. although the services to disabled people and their family improved in recent years, the findings of this study suggest that the problems experienced by families with disabled children are continuing.