Family Support And Psychological Resilience As Predictors Of Maternal Stress Among Mothers Of Children With Developmental Disabilities
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Abstract
This paper discusses how family support and psychological resilience predicts maternal stress in mothers of children with developmental disabilities. Data collection was done using a quantitative correlational research design where purposive sampling using standardized scales was used to collect data on 300 mothers involving the Parental Stress Scale, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, and the Family Support Inventory scales. To investigate the relationships between the variables, descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and regression analysis were conducted. The findings indicate that both the family support and psychological resilience are negative predictors of maternal stress, so the greater the perceived family support and resilience, the lower the level of maternal stress. Moreover, the mediate of the hypothesis relationship between family support and stress was identified as resilience indicating that positive family settings contribute to the coping skills among mothers. The research reveals that the family networks need to be reinforced, the interventions based on resilience are needed, and psychological support services should be incorporated to the mothers of children with developmental disabilities. The limitations here are the fact that a cross-sectional design is used and the data is self-reported, both of which can affect the generalizability. The dynamic character of resilience and stress should be reflected in future research using mixed-method fully or longitudinal designs.
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