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Stress And Social Support Of Parents With An Adult Mentally Retarded Child, Nancy Patricia Kropf

Theses and Dissertations

Parent-child caregiving is the most basic caregiving situation. However, parents who continue to provide care to an adult mentally retarded child have been an unexamined group of caregivers. This study compared stress levels and social support constellations among these caregivers and two other groups of parents.

The study tested two major hypotheses. Parents who were caregivers for an adult child with mental retardation were predicted to report higher stress levels and smaller social support constellations than the other groups. Two comparison groups were included in the study. One group was parents of an mentally retarded child who did not live …