Relationships among hardiness, stress, and coping efficacy in mothers of adolescents with cognitive impairments

Raising a cognitively impaired individual creates long-term stress for the family unit and creates the need for effective coping responses. The developmental stage of adolescence in cognitively impaired individuals has been found to be one of the most stressful times for these individuals and their caregivers, primarily the mothers. It is critical to understand those variables that may contribute to effective maternal coping during this adolescent stage so that interventions and programs incorporating these findings can be developed to assist these mothers in reaching their highest coping potential. The purpose of this research was to investigate the possible relationships between stress and the construct of hardiness and its components, and the coping efficacy of mothers of cognitively impaired adolescents. Four inventories were sent to 133 mothers of cognitively impaired adolescents attending Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) classrooms in high schools in Knox County and to mothers of cognitively impaired adolescents living in Anderson County. These inventories included: (a) a demographic inventory to describe the subjects, (b) the Perceived Stress Scale, (c) the Personal Views Survey to measure maternal hardiness, and (d) Factor I, Parental Coping Scale, to measure maternal coping efficacy. Correlational analyses were used with data from 55 completed packets to determine the relationships between stress, hardiness and its components, and maternal coping efficacy. Several t-tests were done to determine possible differences in levels of hardiness for mothers who reported higher levels of coping efficacy versus those who reported lower levels of coping efficacy. Student t-tests were also done to compare hardiness levels in higher income level mothers to those in lower income level mothers. Correlation analyses showed that there was no significant relationship between stress and maternal coping efficacy or between the hardiness composite, the hardiness control component, and the hardiness commitment components and maternal coping efficacy. The results did show a small but significant negative relationship between the challenge component and maternal coping efficacy (r = -.28, p<.05). There were significant negative relationships between stress and the hardiness composite and two hardiness components of control and commitment. However, challenge was not significantly related to stress. T-tests showed that all differences in group means (i.e., income levels and maternal coping efficacy scores; hardiness scores, stress, challenge scores and maternal coping efficacy scores) were found to be nonsignificant. Results suggest that there was normal variability in maternal coping efficacy, but that the construct of hardiness as measured by the Personal Views Survey does not help to account for this variability. The overall mean perceived stress scores show that these mothers do perceive themselves as more stressed than the normative samples, but these perceived stress levels are not related to their ability to cope with the diagnosis of cognitive impairment in their children. Theoretical and professional implications as well as suggestions for future research are discussed.