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Interview with Parents of Children with Down Syndrome: Their Perceptions and Feelings

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Abstract

Objective

To obtain information about the life of the families having children with Down Syndrome through an interview with parents. The authors focused on the effect of having a child with Down syndrome on the parents, factors causing problems on the family and the characteristics of a family with children having Down syndrome.

Methods

In the present study, the authors evaluated the social, economic and individual problems of the parents (n = 100) who had a child with DS by an interview consisting of 16 questions about the families’ characteristics, their relations with each other and other people and their attitudes towards the child with DS . The control group consisted of 100 subjects having healthy children who were recruited from the outpatient clinics of the same hospital.

Results

The authors found that children with DS mostly spend their time with their mothers, and mothers reported higher levels of stress than fathers. The rate of mothers who reported higher possibility to divorce in the future is much higher than fathers (p < 0.05).

Conclusions

High rates of marital and parental problems, particularly perceived by the mothers, observed in this study are the main issues which should be considered during the assessment of those children in order to cope with the problems and improve both patients’ and families’ life quality.

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Contributions

OC and FO; Planned and supervised the study, AD and BD; Collected the controls’ data and evaluated the data, AD; Prepared the manuscript, TC and AV; Collected the patients’ data, CG; Performed statistical analysis

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None.

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None.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medical Genetics, Ege University, Izmir, Turkey

    Asude Durmaz, Tufan Cankaya & Ali Vahabi

  2. Department of Pediatrics, Ege University, Izmir, Turkey

    Burak Durmaz, Ozgur Cogulu & Ferda Ozkinay

  3. Department of Medical Biology, Ege University, Izmir, Turkey

    Cumhur Gunduz

Authors
  1. Asude Durmaz
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  2. Tufan Cankaya
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  3. Burak Durmaz
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  4. Ali Vahabi
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  5. Cumhur Gunduz
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  6. Ozgur Cogulu
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  7. Ferda Ozkinay
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Asude Durmaz.

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Durmaz, A., Cankaya, T., Durmaz, B. et al. Interview with Parents of Children with Down Syndrome: Their Perceptions and Feelings. Indian J Pediatr 78, 698–702 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12098-010-0315-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12098-010-0315-7

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