The prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) cases has been increasing worldwide. There are countless aspects of challenges faced by parents to bring up children with ASD. Parents of children with ASD are often reported to have higher stress in parenting compared to parents with normal children or children with other disabilities such as Down syndrome. Therefore, this study explored the challenges faced by mothers of children with ASD. Mothers whom were selected are the primary guardians and spend a lot of time nurturing these children. This qualitative study involved in-depth interviews with five (5) informants in Selangor. The thematic analysis identified the challenges faced by the mothers of children with ASD, which are the aspects of behavioral, financial and community acceptance. The findings showed that mothers to children with ASD encountered numerous complicated challenges which require the support of all parties to address those challenges. High support and compassionate understanding are really needed from the spouse, normal children, local communities, and government to alleviate their difficulties. Thus, the findings of this study hopefully will help various parties to understand the challenges faced by the mothers of children with ASD. It can also be the guiding principle in designing supportive programs and interventions for children with ASD as well as their parents.
The present study investigates the role of parenting styles on effort perseverance with mediating roles of conscientiousness and mindfulness as moderators. For this purpose, 272 Iranian high school girl students were chosen by stratified random sampling. Data were analyzed by Path Analysis and Hierarchical Regression methods. The results showed that maternal control, parental control and maternal responsibility predict effort perseverance through conscientiousness; and paternal responsibility indicates positive and significant relationship with effort perseverance. Furthermore, findings showed that the relationship between conscientiousness and effort perseverance was moderated by mindfulness. Parenting style is an important factor in predicting effort perseverance through conscientiousness. In addition, being mindfulness has an effective role in relation to conscientiousness and effort perseverance.
Taking care of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) could be a demanding task for parents. Consequently, parents of children with ASD may experience parenting stress and depression symptoms. This study examined parenting stress and depression symptoms among parents of children and adolescents with ASD. This study also examined the role of child characteristics (e.g., age, child quality of life and problem behavior) on parenting stress and depression symptoms and the effect of parenting stress on parental depression. A total of 78 parents were examined using a questionnaire survey. The result indicated that parents caring a younger age group of children with ASD have higher levels of depression symptoms compared to parents caring for older group of children with ASD. The result also revealed a significant difference in level of depression symptoms between parents with higher levels of parenting stress and parents with lower parenting stress. Only the children age significantly predicts depression symptoms in parents of children with ASD. This indicates that children age is potential to affect mental health among parents of children with ASD.
Psychiatric services have progressed well throughout history, marked by a shift from heavily inpatient asylums to outpatient management via deinstitutionalization, and advances in psychopharmacology. An overview of important themes is discussed at public mental health level. Firstly, differences between sexes are touched upon from theoretical and societal perspectives. Next, among the disabled, the phenomenon of diagnostic overshadowing, attributing apparent mental health problems to learning disability, contributes to their overall poorer quality of life. Mental health at both extremes of age is another important theme, whereby dementia and depression are keenly observed in the older age group, while maternal risk factors and parenting play a role in the mental well-being of the younger age group. Fourthly, inequalities, stigma and discrimination, are rife among people living with mental illness, and thereby detrimental in their road to recovery. Deinstitutionalization is explained as being more than just downsizing the inpatient load, gaining prominence with the emergence of community psychiatry services, and found to be helpful in overcoming stigma. Demographically, it was demonstrated that developing countries, as opposed to developed countries, have advantages in their approaches to psychiatric services, including better integration of people living with mental illness into society. Lastly, the psychological well-being of mental health workers should not be discounted, with measures such as stress management and resilience training proving to be key in combating burnout.
Introduction: Parents of children with chronic illness such as thalassaemia, experience parental anxiety as a result of multiple stressors; these parents will consequently undergo the process of coping and adjustment in order to overcome the situation. Identifying families who may require psychosocial intervention is an important step towards providing holistic management for these children.
Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the level of parenting stress amongst parents of children with thalassaemia. Risk factors associated with high parenting stress score were identified. Research instruments used were the Parenting Stress Index/Short Form and Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations.
Results: A total of 54 subjects were recruited. High total parenting stress score (TPSS, defined at 75th centile) for this cohort was 99.5 whereas the mean TPSS was 86.18. Overall, 24% of these parents have high TPSS. Chinese ethnicity, number of children, monthly income, task-oriented and emotion-oriented coping mechanisms were significantly associated with a high TPSS. Logistic regression analysis revealed that low task-oriented but high emotion-oriented scores were risk factors with the greatest predictive power.
Conclusion: Early recognition of parenting stress is important to identify at risk parents so that interventions such as counseling and social support may be given.
Expectations and satisfactions are two different yet interrelated area. Hence, the main purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of working parent expectation on parenting satisfaction among working parents in Sabah. In addition, this study also examines the differences of the background of respondents in terms of socio-economic status and the level of education towards parenting satisfaction in Sabah. The study employed purposive sampling survey method with questionnaire. It has been distributed to 210 working parents in various sectors around Kota Kinabalu and Beaufort, Sabah. The set of questionnaire used in this study comprising the Parent Comparison Level Index (PCLI) to measure parental expectation and the Parent Satisfaction Scale (PSS) used to measure parenting satisfaction. The data obtained were analyzed using the IBM SPSS version 23 software through simple regression test and one-way ANOVA test according to the objectives of the study. The results of the analysis showed that parental expectations were significantly and positively influencing parenting satisfaction with a contribution of 34.6 percent variance. Whilst, the difference in education level and socio-economic status of parents shows that there is no difference in parenting satisfaction. In conclusion, higher parenting expectation will lead to higher parenting satisfaction. However, parenting satisfaction is not related to the differences in educational background and socioeconomic status of the parents. The implication of this study is toward parents and the aspect involving parenting satisfaction.
Recent statistics from the Social Security Organization (SOCSO) of Malaysia shows Commuting Accident (CA)
increased consistently by 1500 cases per year from 2008 to 2012. This has resulted in the rising of fatality rate,
extensive claims of compensation payment and not to mention loss of valuable talents. However, little is known
about the contributing factors to the occurrences of CA in Malaysia because CA is never considered to be work
related before. This study aims to explore work related factors with occurrence of CA using 5-year statistical data
from SOCSO, Malaysia. Moreover, we also reviewed studies published between 1990s and 2014 to support the
statistical findings. Motorbike is found as the most common vehicle used which involved in CA. Individual factors
concerning workers behaviour is a main risk factor of CA. Family related factors (parenting responsibility), work
burden, workplace support as well as environmental factors such as bad weather and bad road conditions are also
significant contributions of CA. It is very important to develop behavioural intervention strategies and provide proper
training. Hence, more attention should be directed to young individual workers in balancing them with capabilities and
organization performance demand. This may lead to the elimination of the other causes of CA. In conclusion, solutions
to this problem involve not only a particular party to ensure the wellbeing of workers in Malaysia, but all authorities
should play roles in enhancing safety and health matter of workers especially on the occurrence of accident.
Drowning contributes to incapacity and early death in many countries. In low- and middle-income countries, children are the most susceptible to fatalities. Over 50 % of the global drowning deaths occur among children aged under 15 years old with children aged between 1 and 4 years of age being most at risk. In Bangladesh, drowning rates are 10 to 20 times more than those in other developing countries. The object of this study is to determine the socio-demographic, environmental and caring hazard issues for child drowning in Bangladesh.
This study investigated the role of parental and peer mediation in young adolescents' engagement in risk-taking in social networking sites (SNSs). A survey conducted in Malaysia with 469 SNS users aged 13-14 revealed that control-based parental mediation can cause boomerang effects, making young adolescents more inclined to taking risks in SNSs. While discussion-based parental mediation was found to be negatively related to young adolescents' befriending strangers in SNSs, it did not reduce privacy risks. Findings also suggested that peer influence could result in undesirable outcomes. In particular, the more young adolescents talked about Internet-related issues with peers, the more likely they were to disclose personally identifiable information on SNSs.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a chronic debilitating illness with onset in early childhood. The objective of this study was to look at the impact of children with ADHD on their parents.
Objective: This case report aims to highlight the importance of parental contribution to the school refusal problem. Methods: We report a case of a 9- year old boy who presented with school refusal behaviour. Results: There was no psychiatry diagnosis made in this patient. Parental issues such as ineffective and inconsistent parenting, and parental marital disharmony contribute significantly to the school refusal behaviour. Conclusion: Parents in particular are important team players in the management of school refusal. Parental issues need to be explored and managed accordingly to ensure good outcome. ASEAN Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 15 (1): January - June 2014: 83-85.
Parenting behaviour is culturally sensitive. The aims of this study were (1) to translate the Parental Bonding Instrument into Malay (PBI-M) and (2) to determine its factorial structure and validity among the Malaysian population.
To date, very few publications have examined the health related quality of life (HRQL) in the younger population with menstrual problems, despite their high prevalence in adolescent girls. We describe the health-related quality of life (HRQL) among adolescents with menstrual problems and identified factors that have an impact on it.
The authors investigated the moderating role of father's education on the associations between perceived paternal parenting styles and locus of control among 382 Malaysian adolescents with an average age of 14.27. Data were collected by means of adolescents' self-report using standardized instruments (i.e., parental authority questionnaire and Nowicki-Strickland Internal-External Control Scale for Children). Results revealed that there were significant negative relationships between fathers' authoritative parenting style (r = -.243, p < .001) and authoritarian parenting style (r = -.130, p < .01) with adolescents' internal locus of control. Furthermore, the findings indicated that father's high level of education moderated the relationship between perceived paternal authoritarian parenting and locus of control (b = -0.147, p < .001). The findings underscore the need to include the role of parents' education when assessing the links between parenting styles and adolescents' locus of control.
Postpartum depression is one of the major depressions experienced by women during three months after giving birth to their babies. The symptoms of this type of depression cannot be taken lightly as it affects not only the women but also the development of the babies, family harmony and functioning and can in fact harm themselves and other individuals in their surrounding. Thus, this research was conducted to identify the influence of parental stress towards postpartum depression. A total of 181 women participated in this study and they were from two groups namely married and unmarried women who just gave birth. Two instruments were used and they were the Postpartum Depression Screening Scale and the Parental Stress Index Short Form. Results obtained showed that parental stress and its dimensions were significantly correlated with postpartum depression. In addition, maternal stress and difficult child characteristics were significant predictors of postpartum depression. Findings also showed that there were significant differences of parental stress and its dimensions between married and unmarried women who just gave birth. These findings imply the importance of coping with parental stress to prevent women from experiencing postpartum depression.
Keywords Postpartum Depression · Parental Stress · Child Characteristics · Regression
AIM:
The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between breastfeeding and sleep patterns in infants from Asia-Pacific region.
METHODS:
Parents of 10 321 infants (0-11 months) from Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam completed an expanded version of the Brief Infant Sleep Questionnaire.
RESULTS:
Overall, 4714 (45.72%) were currently being breastfed; 61.3% of those between 0 and 5 months and 36.6% of those between 6 and 11 months. Currently breastfed infants, when compared with not currently breastfed infants, had a significant increase in the number and duration of night-time wakings and less consolidated sleep. Interestingly, currently breastfed infants less than 6 months also showed longer duration of daytime sleep and obtained more sleep overall. Of note, of those who were currently breastfed, those infants who were nursed back to sleep during night, woke up more often at night (2.41 vs. 1.67 times) and had shorter continuous night-time sleep period (5.58 vs. 6.88 h; P < 0.001). There was no significant difference between breastfeeding and non-breastfeeding infants in the number of night wakings, when the nursing to sleep variable was controlled for in the analysis of variance.
CONCLUSION:
Breastfeeding is associated with reduced sleep consolidation in infants. This relationship, however, may be moderated by parenting practices of nursing to sleep and back to sleep during the night. Thus, parents of infants with night waking problems should be encouraged to limit the association between nursing and falling to sleep, to improve sleep while maintaining breastfeeding.
Parenting stress is the stress level experienced within the role of a parent (Hoekstra-Weebers et al. 1998). The source of stressors is variable and dependent on the phase of disease and chemotherapy (Sawyer et al. 2000). Failure to cope with these stressors may in turn affect the child’s emotional and social adjustment towards the diagnosis of cancer in addition to poor medical treatment adherence behaviour (Sawyer et al. 1993). The objectives of this study are to determine the level of parenting stress, the risk factors contributing to high parenting stress, and the coping mechanisms used to handle the stress. This single centred, cross-sectional study was done amongst 117 parents at the Paediatric Haematology and Oncology Unit, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre (UKMMC) over two years duration. Self-administered questionnaires comprising the Parenting Stress Index/Short Form (PSI/SF) and Coping Inventory for Stressful Situation (CISS) were distributed to parents of children who were 12 years old and below. The mean total parenting stress score amongst parents of children diagnosed with acute leukaemia was 91.5±21.1(95% CI). A total of 27.3% of parents experienced a high total parenting stress score (defined as total PSI score ≥ 75th centile, ie ≥ 103). Task-oriented coping mechanism was used by the majority of parents. Emotion-oriented coping mechanism was the only identifiable risk factor for high parenting stress score following multiple logistic regression analysis. A parent who used emotion-oriented coping mechanism was 7.1 times (95% Confidence Interval 1.2 to 41.4) more likely to have a high parenting stress score compared to a parent who used other coping mechanisms. By identifying these at-risk parents, appropriate counselling and psychological support may be offered early to alleviate the stress as well as assist in the coping and adjustment mechanisms of these parents.
Depression is usually discussed as an adult problem; however there is a need to recognize it being a significant problem for children. Rarely is depression focused on how it affects parenting and child outcomes, particularly for young children.Often women are victims of violence, and the devastating effects of depression are significant in such households. However one must not ignore, the effect depression has on parenting, where in these contexts, women themselves, become the perpetrators of violence. When mothers are not well-2 central parental functions are threatened: the ability to foster healthy relationships and to carry out the practical functions of parenting2.When this is not carried out, one sees obvious reductions in young children’s behavioral, cognitive, and social and emotional functioning. Neuroscience is clearly evident that the primary ingredient for healthy early brain development is the quality of the earliest relationships from a baby’s primary caregiver.
BACKGROUND: To assess the prevalence of parental behaviors and other factors of sleep ecology and to analyze their relationships with sleep outcomes in a large sample of children ages birth to 36months in multiple countries/regions.
METHODS: Parents of 29,287 infants and toddlers (48% boys; Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam) completed an internet-based expanded version of the Brief Infant Sleep Questionnaire.
RESULTS: Overall, there is a high level of parental involvement in sleep onset and sleep maintenance for young children, with significant differences in parenting behaviors across cultural groups. For predominantly-Caucasian, the most common behavior occurring at bedtime is falling asleep independently in own crib/bed (57%), compared to just 4% of those children living in predominantly-Asian regions. Parental behaviors and sleep ecology, including parental presence at sleep onset, bedtime, and bedtime routine, significantly explain a portion of the variance in sleep patterns. Overall, parental behaviors are more highly predictive of nighttime sleep outcomes in predominantly-Caucasian regions. Finally, parental involvement in sleep onset mediates the relationship between cosleeping and sleep outcomes.
CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the best predictors of nighttime sleep are related to parental behaviors at bedtime and during the night. Furthermore, sleep disruption and decreased total sleep associated with bed sharing and room sharing are mediated by parental presence at bedtime. These findings provide additional support for addressing parental behaviors in behavioral interventions for infant and toddler sleep problems.