Challenges of parents with children with intellectual and neurodevelopmental disorders during COVID-19: Experiences and their impact on mental health

ABSTRACT

Background

Parents of children with intellectual and neurodevelopmental disorders are a highly burdened group that faces additional challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

In this study, parents of children with intellectual and neurodevelopmental disorders (N = 600) living in Canada participated in a cross-sectional online survey.

Results

More than 96% of the parents reported facing additional challenges due to the pandemic. COVID-19-related stressors correlated with poorer mental and physical health. Parents who reported a higher amount of COVID-19-related stressors also reported more post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms.

Discussion

Resuming and implementing new services for children with intellectual and neurodevelopmental disorders and their parents will be key in alleviating the challenges for those parents.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• parent
• child
• mental health
• neurodevelopmental disability

Acknowledgements

We thank our research team Michelle Chisholm, Maria McGrath, Michael Nash and Karen Turner as well as our research collaborators Janine Olthuis and Anselm Crombach. We are also very grateful for our parent partners and ambassadors who supported us throughout this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (to PM), Strategy for Patient Oriented Research (to PM), and the IWK Health Centre (to EK and PM). The funders have no influence on the study design, collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data.