EFFECTS OF DISABILITY ON FAMILY
Disability is defined as the inability of a person to perform a task due to loss of a body part or muscle power. Disability can be of various degrees depending on the area and the extent of injury. Depending on the disability it affects the individual and its family. It affects more if the disability occurs in earlier stage of the life. If a child born with the disability, both the child as well as the family suffers equally or sometimes the family suffer more.
The time it is decided that the child is to born, the parents and family starts dreaming about the child’s future. So the time family comes to know about the disability, their dreams shatter down. This is the phase of shock and they deny accepting the situation. Slowly they start coming out of shock and one more, harrowing process of diagnosis, mis believes, visits to professionals, and search of right treatment make parents more depressing. Some parents lose their hope during this phase; some will get the right path whereas some will loss in between.
Some families suffering increase more when they don’t find a proper psychological as well as professional support. Families are left more wondering about the prognosis of their child disability and what future holds for them. Delayed or wrong diagnosis may even sometimes complicate the situation. Sometimes parents are blamed for disability or parents blame their karma/kismat or other religious belief.
Bringing and looking after a disabled child is not an easy job hence it affects the normal functioning of the family life.
Financial issues affect the disability and vice versa. It takes lots of money and time to get proper diagnosis and treatment by number of professionals. Moreover to take care a special need child one of the parents has to drop the job or alter the hours of employment to provide the care for the child. So a single parent income imposes greater financial strain on the family for providing the professional care and additional to equipments. Moreover the regular and longterm professional help and special school put additional burden on family financial status
Without proper information about the child’s condition the parents feel that they are lost or being thrown on other planet. Strained or limited finances, time, and sense of inferiority limit the parent’s social activities. Most of the time mother is the one who give up the job and stay with the child. She blames herself or is blamed by the family members. If husband or family members are not supportive she feels isolated, more depressed and exhausted. The caregiver has to be committed to child 24x7, leads to burnout. Parents become more anxious of their children future. What will happen to their child after them remains a haunting question to them. Giving answers to the relatives and neighbors are more frustrating. The child is more demanding for the parent’s time hence the couple cannot be able to spend their leisure time together. Moreover, as the child grows it puts more demands and that make parents more worried. The child’s prolonged illness or dependency exhaust the parents both mentally and physically. Most of the families loose their patience and sometimes may lead to separation and divorce. The pressure on the family members is immense and hence sometime leads to breakdown.
Lack of time, interest and depression make the parents more isolated and their socialization becomes poor. Sometimes the child throws temper tantrum and behavior problems, which can create an embarrassing situation. Poor acceptance of the child may aggravate the problem. Services are poor or hard to afford by every class of people. Poor and delayed diagnosis is very common which further delays the recovery and leads to complications.
Sometimes if the parents have the other siblings then the child may not get proper time, love and attention because of child with special need
demand more time and care. The child may feel isolated and insecure. This creates anger, anxiety and tension among the siblings. However most of the time situation is managed but sometime the sibling may not understand the reason and develops rivalry and feel jealous.
Hence disability not only affects the child with special needs, it affects the family, community and humanity itself.
Posted byNeeti at 11:27 PM
Labels: knowledge sharing
Really touching article which brings out the plight of persons having mental or physical disabilities. So people who think very lowly of them or even sometimes try to make fun of them should realise that they are doing nothing better than committing a heinous crime. Like every person in the world, even a disabled person has something special in him and we need to recognize this fact and help them nurture it.