Factors Affecting the Caregiver Difficulties in Caring of Children With Cerebral Palsy

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Cerebral Palsy (CP) can trouble caregivers in the families of children with cerebral palsy. This study aimed to investigate the factors affecting caregiver troubles of the families of children with CP. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 121 children with CP and their parents participated. Factors such as gross motor function, manual ability, communication function, eating and drinking abilities, seizure, IQ, age, gender, auditory and visual problems were evaluated in children, and their predictive power to the caregiver difficulties was measured. Results: The Mean±SD of age of the children in the study was 9.7±4.6 years. The linear regression results showed that none of the evaluated factors were predictors of caregiver difficulties. Conclusion: The present study showed that none of the factors mentioned could predict caregivers’ troubles. Future studies on the factors affecting the caregiver difficulty should be conducted to provide additional information or to draw more complex models to describe caregivers’ difficulties in parents of children with CP in Iran.

Keywords

• cerebral palsy
• caregivers
• difficulties