Parents of disabled more stressed, ill

MADISON, Wis., Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Raising a child with a disability causes more daily stress and long-range health problems than parenting a child without disabilities, U.S. researchers say.

Stress and health ills were greater among parents of disabled children, U.S. researchers found.

The study, published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, found parents who had children with disabilities -- that included attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and bipolar disorder -- reported having at least one stressor on 50 percent of the study days compared with 40 percent among other parents.

The parents of disabled children also had a greater number of stressors and a greater number of physical health problems.

When researchers evaluated saliva samples from the parents to measure the changing patterns of a biological marker linked to stress -- cortisol -- they found parents of children with disabilities showed patterns of chronic stress much higher than normal on days when the parents spent more time with their children.

"Our findings indicate the magnitude of the additional daily stress that these families face," lead study author Marsha Mailick Seltzer of the University of Wisconsin in Madison said in a statement.

Researchers used data including telephone interviews from the Midlife in the United States study, for 82 parents -- average age 57 years -- of children with disabilities and for a similar group of parents of children without disabilities.