Quality of life, health satisfaction and family impact on caregivers of children with developmental delays

Objective: To study the quality of life, health satisfaction and family impact on caregivers of children with developmental delays in Taiwan. Design: Cross-sectional study. Subjects: The caregivers of children with diagnoses of developmental delays recruited from a teaching hospital in northern Taiwan. Methods: The main caregivers of 48 male and 22 female children with developmental delays were recruited. WHOQOL-BREF for health-related quality of life (HRQOL), PedsQL-Health Satisfaction for health satisfaction, PedsQL-Family Impact Module and Impact on Family Scale for family impact were evaluated. The correlation of caregivers' HRQOL, health satisfaction and family impact were also studied. Results: Caregivers in nuclear families had higher health satisfaction scores (78.2 for nuclear families vs. 66.9 for extended families, P < 0.05) when assessed by the PedQL-Health Satisfaction questionnaire. Children's age was negatively correlated with family impact, including parent (-0.272, P =0.023), family (-0.262, P =0.029) and total scores (-0.281, P =0.018) as assessed using the PedsQL-Family Impact Module. Conclusion: A negative relation between impact of burden and child's age suggests that family members gradually adapt to the delayed developmental status in their children as they grow. Caregivers in nuclear families having higher health satisfaction than those in extended families may be due to Chinese cultural effects.