A Comparative Study of Mental Health between Fathers of Exceptional Children Suffering from Intellectual Disability, Multiple Disabilities, Physical- Motor Disorder, Visual Impairment and Hearing Impairment and Fathers of Normal Children

The process of child birth is pleasant for parents though it might be accompanied by difficulties and hardships. It should be noted that hope and desire to have a healthy normal baby gives parents a feeling of confidence to accept their own baby. But as soon as they are informed of their baby’s disability, all hopes and wishes are gone and problems begin to appear, putting the mental health of parents at risk. The aim of this study is to examine the metal health condition of fathers of exceptional children, namely children with intellectual disability, multiple disabilities, physical- motor disorder, visual of impairment and hearing impairment and fathers of normal children. This study employed a causal- comparative design. Convenience sampling was used to recruit 530 parents of children with exceptional children and 65 fathers of normal children as the participants in the study. The research tool was General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). Multiple Variable Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was used to test the research hypotheses. Bonferroni test was used for pairwise comparison of groups and variance-covariance matrix equality assumption was studied using Mbox test. There was no significant difference between five groups under study, namely, fathers of children with intellectual disability, multiple disabilities, physical- motor disorder, visual impairment and hearing impairment) with respect to metal health components (physical symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, social performance, and depression). However, there was a significant difference between fathers of normal children and fathers of children with multiple disabilities regarding physical symptoms component (p<0.001). As to physical anxiety and insomnia components, there was a significant difference between fathers of normal children and fathers of children with disabilities (p<0.001). There wasn’t a significant statistical difference between fathers of normal children and fathers of children with visual impairment regarding physical symptoms and anxiety. With respect to social performance component, there was significant difference between fathers of normal children and fathers of children with intellectual disability, motor-physical disorder, and hearing impairment (P<0.001). This is while there wasn’t a significant statistical difference between fathers of normal children and fathers of children with multiple disabilities, and visual impairment. With respect to depression component, there was a significant difference between fathers of normal children and fathers of children with intellectual disability, motor-physical disorder, and hearing impairment (P<0.001), while difference was not significant between fathers of normal children and fathers of children with multiple disabilities, and visual impairment in this component. Based on the results obtained for this study, mental health was a feature distinguishing fathers of exceptional children and fathers of normal children. Fathers of exceptional children experience and go through more physical disorders, anxiety, social problems and depression, which threaten their mental health.