Sudha Lama, Sandhya Gupta and Sujata Satapathy
AIIMS, India
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Clin Exp Psychol
The single-parent family and their children are vulnerable groups and are at greater risk of stress, which may have an adverse effect on their psychological health. The study was conducted using a descriptive, cross sectional design on a hundred women having single parenting experience (widow, divorced/separated, or doing single parenting because of employment or other reasons) chosen by snowball sampling and convenience sampling techniques in community dwellings in Delhi-NCR. Three standardized tools were used, Parental Stress Scale and MSPSS and GHQ-30 to assess Parenting stress and psychological health including social support. The women having single parenting stress had moderate parenting stress. Out of 100, half of the women having single parenting experience had good psychological health and other half had poor psychological health. The social support was available mostly from the family followed by friends and others. There was a statistically significant association between parenting stress of women having single parenting experience with their low education, low monthly income, no occupation, Hindu, Muslims/other religions and lack of financial help from the spouse. And also there was a statistical significant association between psychological health of women with their lower age and lower monthly income. Most of the women having single parenting experience had moderate levels of anxiety, depression, social dysfunction and inadequate coping, which had an impact on psychological health, who were poor.
