Abstract:

Parents of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities face numerous challenges and endure high levels of stress, which had a negative impact on their physical and mental health. They provide more care than "typical" parents do, and as a result, they are more likely to develop parental burnout. Parental burnout may negatively affect the wellbeing of parents of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Moreover, a family’s well-being has been shown to impact the well-being for the child with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Therefore, it is important to understand the factors that contribute to family well-being to inform the types of interventions and supports that are provided to families. The current study aimed to explore the relationship between burnout dimensions and well-being in Qatari parents of children with and without neurodevelopmental disabilities to examine whether burnout dimensions account for differences in reported well-being.

The Arabic version of Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA-A) along with The World Health Organization- Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5) were administered to four groups of parents (N=318) of children with either autism spectrum disorder (ASD), intellectual disability (ID), or attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as well as parents of typically developed (TD) children. Results showed negative significant correlation between all burnout dimensions and well-being. Additionally, regression results indicate that burnout dimensions accounted for significant variance in well-being, explaining 63 % of the variance. Moreover, parents of children with ASD experienced higher levels of burnout and reported less level of well-being than the other three groups of parents. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Keywords:

Burnout, Well-being, Parents, Neurodevelopmental Disabilities.