Comparison of maternal stress and psychiatric morbidity among mothers of children having psychiatric disorders and those of typically developing children.

INTRODUCTION: Motherhood is regarded to be stressful, but when the child has a psychiatric illness, the mother is affected more than the father since she is the primary caregiver. She gets affected not only emotionally but also psychologically. Increasing severity of stress in mothers may lead to negative outcome on a child's care.

AIMS: The aim of this study was to evaluate the stress levels in mothers of children diagnosed with psychiatric disorder and to study the association between children having a psychiatric disorder and the psychiatric morbidity in their mothers.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: This was a case-control study with a total of 150 participants, in which 75 consecutive mothers of children were diagnosed with any psychiatric illness using ICD-10 criteria and compared to 75 mothers of typically developing children. The study was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee. The Parental Stress Scale and the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview-Plus questionnaire were used for assessments.

RESULTS: The study showed statistically significant stress scores (49.54) in mothers having children diagnosed with psychiatric illnesses as compared to scores (30.98) in mothers of normally developing children. Psychiatric morbidity in cases (n = 58; 77.3%) was statistically significant as compared to controls (n = 23; 30.6%). Depression and anxiety were among the most common psychiatric morbidities evaluated, and the highest was for mothers having children with severe mental retardation.

CONCLUSION: In all children with psychiatric disorders, mothers have to be screened for psychiatric morbidity to prevent, detect, and manage it at the earliest.