Parents of Mentally Handicapped Children

Abstract

THIS PAPER reports results of studying the adjustment or mental health of parents who have a mentally handicapped child. Previous work by Farber^1,2 has studied, from a social and family-centered viewpoint, the disintegrative effects mentally retarded children have on family organization. A variety of other studies^3-10 have reported on the attitudes and feelings of these parents, mentioning the personal difficulties they experience in coping with the problems posed by the child's development. In this study, a modification of the psychological factors employed by Caplan¹¹ in evaluating behavior in crisis situations is used to assess, from a mental health standpoint, a sample of parents of children with mental handicaps. These factors rely on criteria and indices intrinsic to the problems the parents face in socializing their child. The results are taken as an operational measure of the parents' mental health in the