The purpose of this research is to consider about the influence of suicide of mothers with handicapped children in an ecological perspective, and to assist these mothers by providing them social work practice and social welfare policy implications. Th...
The purpose of this research is to consider about the influence of suicide of mothers with handicapped children in an ecological perspective, and to assist these mothers by providing them social work practice and social welfare policy implications. This research is based on the prior researches done by setting micro system factors on the child's disability rating, health condition, depression level and mother's parenting stress, and for the intermediate system factors, the family's economic status, marriage satisfaction, family cohesion and family relationship. Lastly, for macro system factors, social support social behavior towards the disables were set, and the influence of each variable towards the mothers with handicapped children was empirically analyzed. This research was targeted to mothers living in the province of Gyeonggi-do, and the questionnaire was done from May to September 2019. Among the 356 answers except the 30 inappropriate replies, the total collected answers are 326. The results are as follows:
First, according to the demographic characteristics of the differences of thoughts of suicide, there was a significant difference between people depending on their marriage status and health condition. The people who have experienced a divorce and individuals in bad health conditions had a more higher percentage of thinking about suicide.
Second, the correlation analysis results between the major variables, social support, family relationship, family cohesion, health condition and the social behavior towards the disables have appeared to have a negative correlation.
Third, the sub-scales of interpreting depression in the micro system, middle system (family cohesion and relationship), and macro system (social support and behavior towards the disables) had correlation with the thoughts of depression. However, the sub-scales of parenting stress like economical, emotional and educational stress and thoughts of suicide had no correlation.
Forth, the results of the simple regression analysis have shown that the variants of the micro system such as child's disability level, health condition, and depression have a significant influence on the mother's thoughts of suicide. The family relationship of the middle system, social support of the macro system and the social behavior of the society towards the disables had a significant influence on the mother's thoughts of suicide.
In conclusion, by setting the thoughts of suicide of mothers with handicapped children as a dependent variable and inserting it into the demographic variables, micro system, middle system, and macro system,
the following results of the multiple regression analysis have come out,family relationship, social behavior towards the disables, and depressioninfluenced the mother's thought of suicide in order.
The results of this research show the policy suggestions of social welfare as follows:
First, depression give an implicit influence on the thoughts of suicide of mothers with handicapped children. Therefore, a suicide preventing policythat can find and intervene individuals suffering from depression and the people categorized high risk group should be promoted. The government should prepare a systematic policy that can categorize the mothers with disabled children and their family in the high risk group, and continue to manage and provide professional services.
Second, supportive programs for disabled family relationships should be developed and managed. Most of the government support for disabled families are based on teenaged disables and their brothers and sisters. Therefore, a positive family relationship will lower the percentage of thinking about suicide as this research verifies, hence, programs that help increase family participation should be developed.
Third, it has been found that social behavior towards the disables was a significant variable that can influence the mother's thoughts of suicide. A governmental policy that can improve social prejudice and stop wrong thinking should be actively introduced to all the people. To socially develop a society without discrimination towards the disables, a system should be developed. Proper education for social awareness of the disables should be practiced within communities. These awareness trainings will contribute in the integrated society of disables and non-disables, and will also be a huge help for preventing suicide of the disables and their family.
In conclusion, training policies such as early detections of suicide and the intervention of gatekeepers should be developed. Gatekeepers are one of the core policies of suicide prevention among the developed countries. Gatekeepers are people who provide appropriate responses to others who are in high risks of suicide, and they provide effective suicide preventions.
The first social welfare practical implication is to provide proper services and programs that can help individuals manage their depression and to raise community interests to help reduce depression of the mothers with disabled children. Alike the Parent to Parent program in the U.S., mothers should be provided with emotional and informative support from other mothers who have experienced the similar situations. In addition, peer consolation can be a depression reliever and an effective strategy. Peer consolation can increases emotional safeness and homogeneity between thedisables and their family, and positively affect the prevention of suicide.
Second, a practical social welfare intervention is required to prevent suicide. To maintain positive family relationships, agencies of the middle system should develop and provide family welfare programs. Through these programs, mothers of disabled children will feel that they are essential beings, feel that they are loved, and will not think about suicide often.
Finally, the results from the multiple regression analysis have confirmed that social support does not affect the thoughts of suicide. This is a different result from the previous researches. There are some research that point out the fact that social support is not effective to people with chronic stress and people experiencing high levels of stress. Especially, social support is effective to people experiencing short term stress then long tern stress. Consequently, special educators, social workers and psychological counselors who counsel disables and other family members should keep these factors in mind while providing counseling services.