ABSTRACT
Many mentally handicapped children exhibit a wide range of problematic behaviors. These behaviors need to be reduced as it creates difficulties for the person showing it, their parents and other people. Therefore, identification of these problems among these children will help recognizing and enhancing parents' abilities to meet their children's need, solve these problems and mobilize the necessary resources in order to improve the quality of their lives. This study was carried out to identify different problematic behaviors of mentally handicapped children encountered by their mothers and to assess their mother's coping patterns. For achieving these aims, the cross-sectional approach was adopted where the target population was mothers of educable group of mentally handicapped children [IQ=50-70]. Sidi Beshr and Alexandria Special care centers were chosen as setting for data collection. The sample comprised all mothers of mentally handicapped children attending the index centers. A total of 128 mothers out of 143 responded and completed the interview with a response rate of 89.5%. Data were collected using a specially designed interview questionnaire during the period from the beginning of February 2002 till the end of April 2002. The interview questionnaire consisted of three parts. The first part was related to socio-demographic data about the child and his parents. The second part included data about the problems of mentally handicapped children encountered by their mothers. The third part was a modified coping scale based on Jalowiec and Powers coping scale used to assess coping patterns of mothers. The collected data was processed using SPSS program version 9. For each individual, the total score for each group of coping method was calculated. Then, the score for each group was expressed as a percentage of the maximum possible score. The age of the children attending the included Special Care Centers ranged from 4 to 20 years with a mean of 9.82 +/- 5.410 years. Female sex constituted more than half of the enrolled mentally handicapped children [54.7%]. The handicapped child was the first in his family for 45.3% of the sample. The great majority of parents completed either university level of education and higher [50.0% for fathers and 44.5% for mothers] or secondary level of education and diploma [30.5% for fathers and 40.6% for mothers]. Nearly half of the fathers [49.2%] were professionals while 32.0% of them were semiprofessionals. Meanwhile more than half [55.5%] of the mothers were unemployed. As regard the eating pattern, more than half [51.6%] of the mentally handicapped children were self-dependent and 42.9% were partially dependent as they need some assistance from the mother during eating. In addition 45.3% of the children had poor hygienic feeding practice. Concerning the bowel and bladder control, the results showed that more than half [53.1%] of the mentally handicapped children didn't have controlled bowel practices; 34.3% were partially controlled and 18.8% were not yet controlled. Inadequate bladder control was encountered among 78.9% of the children where 55.5% were partially controlled and 23.4% were not yet controlled. All mentally handicapped children had behavioral, emotional and speech and language problems. Impulsivity topped the list of behavioral problems either within or outside families [55.5% and 59.4% respectively]. Hyperactivity and rebellions ranked the second [49.4%] and the third [36.7%] behavioral problems within the family. As regard emotional problems, the majority of children [79.7%] suffered from nervousness while shyness was less frequent emotional problem [19.5%]. Speech and language problems were also common. About half [49.2%] of mentally handicapped children had manifested stuttering and more than one quarter [28.9%] presented with unclear speech. On the other hand, 60.2% of mentally handicapped children suffered sleeping problems. Night waking was the most frequent complaint of mothers [55.5%]. However, social problems facing children's mothers, arise from poor dealing with people outside the family, were the least frequent where 56.3% of studied mothers suffered socially. Rejection of the affected child was the most embarrassing problem facing the mothers. The five most-used coping methods were "hope that things will be better", "pray; trust in God", accept the situation as it is", "worry" and" do anything just to do something" coping methods. The mean score for use of problem oriented coping method [66.23% +/- 16.672%] was higher than that for use of affective-oriented coping method [65.18% +/- 15.058%]