Families of Handicapped Children: Sources of Stress and its Amelioration

This literature review focuses on the stresses families experience and the support factors needed to help them cope with their handicapped children. Stress often appears to increase with the age of the handicapped child, and it is also based on the daily care-giving demands of the child. Other general factors affecting stress are low family income, divorce, separation, and so forth. The father often plays a limited role in these families even when present. Both formal and informal social support networks are important to these families, often more so than professional support, which has been uneven. Families need to be treated as having individual needs that require individual solutions, even as their handicapped children. Investigators and practitioners are encouraged to continue their focus on the family as a legitimate unit of study and treatment.