Family's Mentally Retarded Child Problems under Protection of Welfare Centers

Family is a social system in which disorder in one member can disrupt the entire family system. Proper understanding of family problems of mentally retarded children teaches children, their families and professionals working with them to alter their attitudes toward proper education and development planning. Aim of this study is to determine problems of families’ with mentally retarded children under protection of welfare centers. In this cross - sectional study 140 parents of children with mental retardation of welfare centers in Gilan province were studied in 2009-2010. Instruments used included a researcher made questionnaire covering socio-demographics and problems (in two domains of social and emotional difficulties) of families with mentally retarded children. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency, mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics (Chi-square and Fisher's exact test). The findings showed that 53.6% of study units had social problems and 57.9% had emotional problems. There was a significant relationship between social problems and child's sex (P=0.006), child’s abnormal behavior (P=0.009), relation of primary caregiver to child (P=0.003), marital status of primary caregiver (P<0.001) mother's job (P=0.03), family income (P=0.004) and the consultative resource of problems (P<0.0001). There was a significant relationship between emotional problems and child’s gender (P<0.0001), child’s retardation (P=0.006), child’s level of independence (P=0.005), child’s abnormal behavior (P<0.001), mother’s job (P=0.003), father’s physical illnesses (P<0.0001), number of family members (P=0.006), family income (P=0.01) and consultative resource in time of problem (P<0.001). Since study results indicated that the majority of study cases suffered social and emotional problems, therefore it seems that a multidisciplinary protection is needed to decrease problems of families with mentally retarded children.