In Their Own Words: Mothers Narrate the Lived Experience of Raising Children with Developmental Disorders Who Engage in Socially Disruptive Conduct.
Rondalyn Varney Whitney
PMID 35674982WHAT IT FOUND
Mothers of children with disruptive behaviors described feeling overwhelmed by conflicting roles and isolated by a lack of emotional and financial support.
Journal writing provided a private outlet for these feelings, with many reporting a shift from distress to calm after short writing sessions.
Key findings
01Two central themes emerged: role fulfillment (strain, overload, advocacy) and role support (emotional and financial).
02Mothers frequently used emotionally laden vocabulary indicating stress, such as 'overwhelmed', 'isolated', and 'guilt', with 'overwhelmed' appearing 16 times.
03Short bursts of journal writing allowed mothers to disclose feelings, with many describing a shift from negative emotions like 'scared' and 'frustrated' to positive ones like 'calm' and 'empowered' after writing.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
Data was collected prior to the 2019 pandemic, which may have altered stress levels and support availability. Mothers self-identified their children as having behavioral disabilities without verification of diagnoses. Not all mothers completed all writing prompts, and actual time spent writing was not recorded. The writing prompts were novel and not validated prior to the study. Response bias is possible, as participants may have hesitated to fully disclose strong emotions.
Declared interests
Funded by West Virginia University. No other conflicts of interest declared in the text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that journal writing is an evidence-based treatment for reducing maternal stress based on this paper. This is a qualitative study describing experiences and themes, not a randomized trial measuring outcomes. The reported shifts in emotion are self-described within the journal entries, not measured clinical improvements.