Psychological acceptance and family quality of life in families of children with intellectual disabilities

Abstract

In order to examine the literature on acceptance and mindfulness in parents of children with developmental disabilities a systematic review was conducted. Twelve studies were included in the review and provided some support for the relevance of these concepts in helping to support parents of children with developmental disabilities. However, general study quality was poor and methodological limitations hampered confidence in these findings. Research considerations are discussed. An empirical study was conducted to examine the relationship between psychological acceptance and family quality of life in parents of children with intellectual disabilities. One-hundred and twenty-nine parents of children with intellectual disabilities participated in a questionnaire based study. Participants completed measures of family quality of life, psychological acceptance, emotional adjustment, mental well-being and impact of the child. Parental psychological acceptance was positively associated with family quality of life and was found to account for around 1.9 per cent of its variance. Parental emotional adjustment was also positively associated with family quality of life, however, when parental psychological acceptance was added to the regression model emotional adjustment was no longer a statistically significant variable. The results of this study suggest that parental psychological acceptance may explain some of the variance in family quality of life. Further research is needed to ascertain whether interventions that improve parents’ psychological acceptance also improve family quality of life.