ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Children and Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1482011
This article is part of the Research TopicInterdisciplinary Approaches to Address Health Disparities for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities from Underserved CommunitiesView all 8 articles
The level and factors associated with caregiver experience among parents of children with cerebral palsy: A cross-sectional study in southwest China
Provisionally accepted
- 1Mianyang Central Hospital, Mianyang, China
- 2West China Children's Medical Center, West China Second University Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Disability is a global public health issue, affecting one in seven people worldwide.In China, there are about 5 million children under 14 years of age with cerebral palsy and about 40,000 new individuals occur every year. Previous studies have revealed that the caregivers of children with cerebral palsy were more likely to perceive a greater burden compared with caregivers of typically developing children. However, there is a lack of information available on the care burden experienced by parents of children with cerebral palsy in China.Objectives: This study was conducted to determine the level of care burden and its related factors in the parents of children with cerebral palsy.This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with parents of 165 children with cerebral palsy who were enrolled in children rehabilitation departments of three tertiary hospitals between September 2021 and December 2022. Besides demographic information, the Caregiver Burden Inventory, the Patient Health Questionaire-9, and the Fatigue Severity Scale were used to collect data. Data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics (correlation and multiple linear regression analysis).The mean (±SD) Caregiver Burden Inventory score of the parents was 42.18±18.79. The score of Fatigue Severity Scale and Patient Health Questionaire-9 demonstrated positive moderate to strong correlations with caregiver burden (r=0.461, P<0.001; r=0.630, P<0.001, respectively). The 2 results of the multiple linear regression analysis showed that a low level of education, long caring time combined with visual impairment, higher depression, and fatigue had an influence on caregiver burden, and 46.4% of the variance in caregiver burden was explained by these factors.The key predictors of caregiver burden include the level of education, caring time, children with visual impairment, and the degree of depression and fatigue. Efforts should be made to relieve the burden on parents of children with cerebral palsy.
Keywords: Cerebral Palsy, Child, Caregiver experience, Parents, Depression, Fatigue
Received: 17 Aug 2024; Accepted: 10 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 钟. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: 晓英 钟, Mianyang Central Hospital, Mianyang, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.