Families of children with disabilities: A review of literature and recommendations for interventions.

Families are a critical source of support for children with disabilities. Family members absorb the added demands on time, emotional resources, and financial resources (Baker-Ericzen, Brookman-Frazee, proceeds to a discussion of issues affecting custodial grandparents; gives special emphasis to the ways in which families differ across culture; and finally, discusses the emerging ideas in intervention that are relevant for these varied types of family caregivers. PARENTS The view that having a child with an intellectual or developmental disability creates negative family outcomes including added stress and parental depression has underpinned much of the research of the past three decades (see Baxter, Cummins, Hayden Dyson, 1997). Likewise, two studies, focusing specifically on mothers, have found that mothers of children with mental retardation experience more depression than those of typically developing children when compared using the Beck Depression Inventory (Olsson & Hwang, 2001) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scales (Blacher, Shapiro, & Fusco, 1997). Although these studies suggest a relationship between childhood disability and parent stress or depression, it is important to note that they did not control for variations related to the diagnosis or care demands associated with the disability. When the parental experience has been examined across diagnoses, some differences have been noted. Parents of children with Down syndrome have been found to experience less stress (Ricci & Hodapp, 2003), depression (Abbeduto, Seltzer, Shattuck, Krauss, Orsmond, & Murphy, 2004), and pessimism (Lewis, Abbeduto, Murphy, Richmond, Giles, Bruno, et. …