The Influencing Factors And Mechanism Of Resilience Of Family Caregivers Of Special Children

Due to their physical or intellectual disabilities,special children need long-term family life care,which brings huge financial burdens and psychological pressures to family caregivers,and puts them in multiple adversities in life.In addition to external factors,the individual’s psychological flexibility is also a very important factor for family caregivers of special children to deal with adversity in life.However,there are few studies on psychological resilience from the perspective of positive psychology.The Kumpfer framework model integrates the interaction of the individual,the environment,and the interaction process,and comprehensively and comprehensively demonstrates the exertion of the psychological resilience effect and the occurrence and development of the entire process.This article takes 280 parents of special children as the object.The main questions to be discussed are:First,how to measure the various resilience factors in the framework model?Second,in the process of interaction between the individual and the environment of the framework model,what is the specific impact mechanism on resilience?Third,how to establish an active intervention program for family caregivers of special children based on resilience factors?The main findings are as follows:(1)Based on the meaning of emotional,cognitive,mental,physical,behavioral and other mental toughness factors in the Kumpfer framework model,combined with literature,a "Questionnaire of Internal Resilience Factors for Family Caregivers of Special Children" was compiled,which included 15 items.After exploratory factor analysis,three dimensions of mental/cognitive vitality,behavior/social ability,and emotional management ability were analyzed,which explained 28.54%,17.67%,and 13.42%of the variation respectively.All three dimensions have good reliability,and Cronbach’s a values are all above 0.65.(2)Using the "Resilience Scale(CD-RISC)Chinese Version" to evaluate the resilience level of family caregivers,it was found that the overall level was significantly lower than that of the national community population(p<0.001).(3)Using Xiao Shuiyuan’s Social Support Scale(SSRS)to measure external social support,it was found that the objective support and support utilization scores of the main caregivers of special children were low,and the three dimensions of scores from low to high were:objective support,Support utilization,subjective support.(4)The internal resilience factors,the resilience level and the total score of social support,subjective support,objective support and support utilization are all positively correlated(p<0.01);t the resilience level is significantly correlated with the total score of internal resilience factors and various dimensions Positive correlation(p<0.01).(5)The social support and internal resilience factors of family caregivers of special children can positively predict resilience,and the explanatory power for resilience is 24.2%and 20.9%,respectively.Moreover,the indirect effect of social support on resilience is 0.17(LLCI=0.10,ULCI=0.24),and the direct effect is 0.29(LLCI=0.17,ULCI=0.41).The main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)The psychological elasticity of the main caregivers of children with special needs is at a relatively low level.(2)The self-compiled "Questionnaire on Internal Resilience Factors of Caregivers of Special Children’s Families" can reflect its own factors that affect the mental flexibility of caregivers from three dimensions:mental/cognitive vitality,behavior/social ability,and emotional management ability.It can be used to assess the ability of caregivers to improve their mental resilience and self-risk factors that reduce their mental resilience.(3)The social support and internal resilience factors of caregivers of special children can effectively predict the resilience level.(4)Social support has a partial mediating effect between the influence of internal factors on resilience.This study embodies the Kumpfer framework model to explore the influencing factors of psychological elasticity of caregivers of special children,and verifies the framework model from an empirical point of view,which has certain theoretical significance.This paper has compiled the "Internal Resilience Factors Questionnaire for Caregivers of Special Children"with good reliability and validity,which provides a tool reference for evaluating the ability of caregivers to improve their mental flexibility and self-risk factors that reduce psychological flexibility in practice.The countermeasures to improve the level of parents’ mental flexibility provide an important basis and have certain practical significance.