JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Parents of disabled children face many challenges when providing care, along with persistent worry and fear about the child health outcome, along with the impact of the child's disability on their lives. Parents of disabled children experience stressful situation and face many emotions one of which is chronic sorrow. Therefore, the Theory of chronic sorrow was introduced to examine and measure feelings of chronic sorrow among parents. Little attention has been made to examine Arab parents with disabled child and the utilization of chronic sorrow theory in this population.

Objective:

The study aims to examine the application of chronic sorrow theory on parents of disabled children in Saudi Arabia.

Methods:

A cross-sectional design was utilized to obtain data from 89 participants who are parents of disabled child. A questionnaire was disturbed via online to measure chronic sorrow.

Results:

The study examined and applied the concepts within the theory of chronic sorrow. The concepts of loss experience yielded a moderately high score (mean 3.3, SD 1.10), of all the variables measuring loss experience, parents scored high in feeling sad when thinking about their child disability (mean 3.9, SD 1.24). Parents have also reported moderately high score (mean 3.3, SD 1.06) in the concept of disparity, specifically when their child doesn’t meet developmental milestone as their peer (mean 3.8, SD 1.30). Feelings of chronic sorrow also displayed moderately high score (mean 3, SD 0.87), with the periodic nature of chronic sorrow as the highest score within the concept of chronic sorrow (mean 3.6, SD 1.16). In addition, internal and external management methods parents believed are effective were examined. Internal management of chronic sorrow are believed to be of high importance by the parents (mean 4.6, SD 0.33), specifically the belief of fatalism (mean 4.8, SD 0.50). Parents also viewed external management of chronic sorrow as important in navigating their emotion (mean 4.5, SD 0.42), specifically reported social support from family and the community (mean 4.7, SD 0.55). The study has identified strong positive relationship between sorrow and loss experience (r=0.765; P < 0.001), and with disparity (r=0.765; P < 0.001). Lastly, the study have found no relationship between chronic sorrow and time passed since parents received diagnosis of their child disability (r=-0.009; P= 0.936).

Conclusions:

The results of this study have utilized the theory of chronic sorrow among parents of disabled children, feeling of loss, disparity and chronic sorrow were reported. Therefore, screening, and parental emotional care are needed for this population. Importance of chronic sorrow management and creation of intervention to enhance parental mental health and well-being are important to be addressed and utilized by the health care workers. Parental acceptance of their child disability doesn’t entail absence of chronic sorrow as its normal grieving process but anticipating the triggers of chronic sorrow and utilizing management method, both internal and external are essential to promote parental mental health and overall child health outcome.