Coping strategies of mother carers of children living with chronic illness and disease in a rural South African community

Abstract

The present study explored the coping strategies used by mother carers of children living with chronic illness and disease (CID) in a rural South African community. Ten mothers (age range = 30 to 56 years) were selected through snowball sampling to participate in the present study. They provided care to their children, a majority (50%) of whom had epilepsy, followed by asthma (20%) and other conditions. Data on the coping strategies used by mothers of children living with CID were collected using semi-structured interviews and analysed thematically. The results showed that mother carers tended to use three types of coping strategies, namely: appraisal-focused, problem-focused and emotion-focused strategies. Appraisal-focused was commonly used by mother carers whose children had epilepsy, whilst mother carers of children with asthma tended to use problem-focused coping strategies. All mother carers were found to use emotion-focused strategies to varying degrees in coping with the chronic diseases of their children.

Keywords:

• mother carers
• chronic illnesses and diseases (CID)
• coping strategies

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad (VLIR). The present study formed part of a bigger research project that was undertaken under the auspices of the University of Limpopo (UL) and Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad-Institutional University Cooperation (VLIR-IUC) Partnership Programme. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of VLIR.