The impact of raising a child with a developmental or physical health condition in Ethiopia.
Anne de Leeuw, Wietske A Ester, Mersha Kinfe and 7 others
PMID 38490136WHAT IT FOUND
Families of children with developmental disabilities in Ethiopia reported significantly lower quality of life than those with physical health conditions.
Caregivers of children with greater health loss also reported poorer family well-being, highlighting the need for scaled-up support.
Key findings
01Families of children with developmental disabilities had lower mean quality of life scores (53.8) compared to families of children with physical health conditions (64.3).
02Children with developmental disabilities had higher disability weight scores (0.28), indicating more severe health loss, compared to children with physical health conditions (0.18).
03Across the whole sample, higher disability weight scores were negatively associated with family quality of life scores.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was conducted in a largely urban population in Addis Ababa, so results may not represent rural areas of Ethiopia. Physical health conditions in the developmental disability group were not systematically assessed, so some children may have had co-occurring physical issues. Diagnoses were made by general psychiatrists without specialist child psychiatry training, which was not available in Ethiopia at the time. The cross-sectional design cannot determine causality between health loss and quality of life.
Declared interests
The study was funded by UK organizations including the Medical Research Council, Department for International Development, Wellcome Trust, and National Institute for Health Research. The authors declared no competing interests.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that the association between health loss and quality of life applies equally within each diagnostic group. The study found this link only in the combined sample, not when analyzing the developmental disability and physical health groups separately.