Assessment of Quality of Life in Mothers of Visually Impaired Children in a Tertiary Care Hospital, Rawalpindi

Abstract

Background: Mothers of visually impaired children often deal with isolation, finances, caregiving, healthcare, education, and emotional stress, harming their quality of life (QOL). Objectives: This study was aimed to assess the QOL of mothers of visually impaired children, to assess those factors that affect QOL of the mothers and the association of various socio demographic variables with QOL of the respondents. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was carried at a tertiary care hospital of Rawalpindi. A total of 264 mothers of visually impaired children were selected through non-probability consecutive sampling. Data were entered and analyzed using SPSS version 26.0. WHOQOL-BREF was used to analyze the QOL of the respondents. Chi-square test of association was applied to determine the factors of QOL of the respondents. Results: Out of total sample, majority of the visually impaired children were female (n=144, 54.5%) and belong to 5-8 years of age (n=115, 43.6%). It was also noted that majority of the children had mild level of visual impairment (n=182, 69%). More than half of the mothers of visually impaired children were married to their cousin (n= 144, 54.5%) and belonged to rural area (n= 140, 53%). Most of the mothers perceived that they had a good quality of life (n=96, 36%) and were satisfied with their health status (n=107, 40%). A significant number of respondents had poor physical and psychological health (n=138, 52.3%). Overall, it was observed that mothers with poor QOL were slightly more in number as compared to those with good QOL (n=134, 51% vs n= 130, 49%).Conclusion: Mothers of visually impaired children exhibited a poor QOL in all four domains. Major child related factors associated with poor QOL of mothers are age of child, cause of disability, duration of disability and duration of caregiving. While mother’s related factors included marital status, outside family marriage, education, income level, number of children and residence. Keywords: Mothers, Quality of life, Rawalpindi, Tertiary care hospitals, visually impaired children.