Niveles de depresión en cuidadores primarios de niños y adolescentes con discapacidad

Abstract

The daily attention and dedication that demand people with disabilities, it is a great challenge to care takers due to the quantity of situations of tension they face. It can reverberate in their lives generating an emotional imbalance or depression. In that sense, it was raised like general objective of this study: determine the levels of depression in primary caretakers of children and teenagers with disability of the Instituto de Parálisis Cerebral del Azuay (IPCA), for which its specific objectives were: to identify the most frequent depressive symptoms and to describe the differences in terms of gender and age, in relation to the levels of depression. The research had a quantitative, descriptive, non-experimental approach. The instruments were the HAD Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (Zigmond y Snaith, 1983) and the sociodemographic record that belongs to the research project of the Faculty of Psychology called “Calidad de vida de personas de Ecuador y variables asociadas”. Participated 123 primary caretakers from 20 to 65 years old participated. The results determined that 74.6% do not have depression, 20.5% have a probable depression that needs to be confirmed and only 4.9% suffer from depression. As a conclusion, it was evident a low incidence of depression in the participants of this study, data that results positive to the caretakers, children and teenagers with disabilities. Since it would not be affected the quality of the care taker´s life neither of the care. It is advisable, to promote spaces and workshops of care for the caretaker. Where it is provided attention to the caretakers who present depressive symptoms and acquire strategies of proper coping, with the purpose to preserve their mental health.