Parental Adjustment to Raising Children with ADHD and Its Socio-Demographic Correlates: A Cross-Sectional Study
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Objective: To assess behavioural and social parental adjustment to raising children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and to examine its association with selected socio-demographic characteristics of parents and their children in Babylon, Iraq.
Methods and Materials: This analytical cross-sectional study was conducted from 13 October 2024 to 16 March 2025 in ADHD centres in Babylon City. A purposive sample of 114 parents of children aged ≤14 years diagnosed with ADHD was recruited. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews, followed by completion of a self-administered questionnaire including the 17-item “Maintaining family integration, cooperation, and an optimistic definition of the situation” subscale of the Coping Health Inventory for Parents (CHIP). Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and multiple linear regression were used to analyse the data, with p ≤ 0.05 considered statistically significant.
Findings: More than half of the parents (55.3%) demonstrated a fair level of overall adjustment, whereas 22.8% and 21.9% showed poor and good adjustment, respectively. Significant associations were found between adjustment level and several socio-demographic variables, including mothers’ and fathers’ education, mothers’ and fathers’ occupation, monthly income, socio-economic status, child’s age, and duration of diagnosis (p<0.05). In multivariate analysis, younger child age remained significantly associated with higher adjustment scores, while other variables did not retain statistical significance.
Conclusion: Most parents of children with ADHD in Babylon exhibit moderate adjustment, with better adjustment linked to higher education, professional occupations, and more favourable socio-economic conditions. These findings highlight the need for targeted psychoeducational and counselling programs to strengthen coping and family integration among parents of children with ADHD.
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