Interrelation of sociodemographic and clinical factors with burnout and engagement among mothers, who joined online peer support networks for persons raising children with disabilities

BACKGROUND: Parents raising children with disabilities are often exposed to stress and emotional burnout associated not only with the parenting process itself, but also with the need to create special conditions for the development and maintenance of the physical and mental well-being of their children. It is important to reveal factors that determine the parents’ adaptation success in a child’s illness situation. Parents of disabled children often join communities via Internet in order to exchange experiences and competencies in the field of care and interaction with children. This is rapidly developing trend of modern society and requires close attention of psychologists and other specialists working with parents of children with disabilities. This knowledge will allow us to develop appropriate mechanisms for cooperation, treatment and prevention in relevant peer support networks.

AIM: The aim of the study was to reveal the relationships of sociodemographic and clinical factors with the severity of burnout and engagement in child care in parents who joined online peer support networks for persons raising children with disabilities.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study involved 125 parents (121 mothers and 4 fathers) caring for children with disabilities. Mean [±SD] age, 36,3 ± 6,7 years. The “Level of relatives’ emotional burnout / parent-child version” was used as an assessment tools. Also, semi-structured interview for assessing socio-demographic and clinical characteristics was applied.

RESULTS: The results of the study showed that age of the mother and child, the education and the work activities of the mother, the child’s kindergarten attendance, the age of onset and duration of the child’s illness, the nature of the relationship with him and the degree of parent’s activity in the treatment and rehabilitation process are the factors associated with engagement and burnout in parents of children with disabilities who joined online peer support networks. In particular, the lesser the age of the mother and the disabled child, the more exhaustion, tendency to devaluate successes and achievements in the process of children’s treatment (inefficacy) and tendency to destructively defuse of stress tension in mothers. The process of exhaustion is most likely at the initial periods of adaptation of the mother to the disease of the child, then the adaptation to the existing situation occurs. Burnout acts as a pathological process that contradicts the general trend and develops in cases when, due to environmental or personal factors, difficulties in adapting the parent to the child’s disease arise.

CONCLUSIONS: Understanding of parents’ burnout processes is important for moderators of Internet communities, since it allows to route work with information content.