Grandparents’ Mental Health and Lived Experiences while Raising Their Grandchildren at the Forefront of COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT

Understanding grandparents’ lived experiences and healthy aging is essential to designing efficient, effective, and safe services to support a family structure in which grandparents care for their grandchildren. However, no study to date has explored this concept in an Arab and Muslim country during a pandemic. The purpose of this study was to examine grandparents’ experiences raising their grandchildren to provide recommendations for needed mental health interventions during and after COVID-19. We used a phenomenological approach to gain a detailed and in-depth understanding of the lived experiences of 15 grandparents caring for their grandchildren. This study shows the need for support service interventions (support groups, health professional support, and respite care) for grandparents in Saudi Arabia, especially during global crises like COVID-19, that enhance social distance and social isolation. Raising grandchildren affects the physical, mental, and social wellbeing of the grandparents.

KEYWORDS:

• Grandparents
• stress
• raising grandchildren
• Covid-19
• social isolation

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the University of Almaarefa for its financial support of this research. The authors would also like to thank the University of North Florida, and all the participants in who took part of the study.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Almaarefa [TUMA‐Project‐2021‐11]. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Almaarefa. The university was not involved in the design, analysis, and development of the manuscript.