Centre for Social Issues, Department of Psychology, University of Limerick, Ireland.
Res Dev Disabil. 2012 Nov-Dec;33(6):2099-105. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2012.06.007. Epub 2012 Jul 7.
The present study tested whether parents caring for children with developmental disabilities would have higher blood pressure compared to parents of typically developing children (controls). It also examined the psychosocial factors underlying this observation. Thirty-five parents of children with developmental disability and thirty controls completed standard measures of perceived stress, child challenging behaviours and social support and wore an ambulatory blood pressure (BP) monitor throughout the day, for one day. Relative to controls, parents caring for children with developmental disabilities reported poorer psychosocial functioning and had a higher mean systolic BP. Of the psychosocial predictors, only social support was found to be predictive. Moreover, variations in social support accounted for some of the between group differences with the β for parental group attenuated from .42 to .34 in regression analyses. It appears that social support may influence blood pressure responses in parental caregivers. Finally, our findings underscore the importance of providing psychosocial interventions to improve the health of family caregivers.
本研究旨在测试照顾发育障碍儿童的父母是否比发育正常儿童（对照组）的父母血压更高。它还探讨了这一观察结果背后的心理社会因素。35 名发育障碍儿童的父母和 30 名对照组父母完成了感知压力、儿童挑战性行为和社会支持的标准测量，并在一天内全天佩戴动态血压（BP）监测仪。与对照组相比，照顾发育障碍儿童的父母报告的心理社会功能较差，平均收缩压较高。在心理社会预测因素中，只有社会支持被发现具有预测性。此外，社会支持的变化解释了组间差异的一部分，回归分析中父母组的 β 值从.42 减弱至.34。似乎社会支持可能会影响父母照顾者的血压反应。最后，我们的发现强调了提供心理社会干预以改善家庭照顾者健康的重要性。
