Summary


EXAMINATION OF PERCEIVED STRESS LEVELS OF FAMILIES HAVING CHILD WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY

The purpose of the research is the examination of perceived stress levels of families having child with intellectual disability. In the research, cross-sectional survey model, from among general survey models, was used. The research group was formed by the simple random sampled voluntary parents, as being 311 mothers and 154 father (n=465), of children with intellectual disability of different levels getting training and rehabilitation services at different institutions in the Istanbul province. “Demographic Information Form”, which was formed by the researcher in order to obtain information regarding the general statuses of the parents, and which consisted of 8 articles as being gender, age, educational status, professional status, economic status, participation in trainings with respect to people with disability status, attachment of the required importance to people with disability status and getting home care payment or disability pension through the child status, and “Perceived Stress Scale”, which was developed by Cohen, Kamarck and Mermelstein (1983), and whose adaptation to Turkish was made by Eskin, Harlak, Demirkıran and Dereboy (2013), were applied on the participants.  The scale consisted of 10 articles in total, and it had a construct enabling the individuals to evaluate their stress levels by themselves. As statistical operation, initially Kolmogorov–Smirnov test was applied in order to test whether the data had normal distribution or not, and as the result of normal distribution of the data, t-test and ANOVA were used. Considering the general findings of the research, while significant differences were determined in the variables of gender, age, professional status, economic status, participation in trainings with respect to people with disability status, attachment of the required importance to people with disability status and getting home care payment or disability pension through the child status of families having child with intellectual disability, no significant difference was determined in their educational status variable. As the result of the analyses performed, it was determined that the perceived stress levels of families having child with intellectual disability were high. In the light of the findings obtained, the causes of perceived stress levels of families were searched, and suggestions were made for decreasing the stress levels of families.



Keywords

Person with intellectual disability, family, stress



References