The effect of having mentally disabled child on anxiety and depression levels of fathers

Having a child with mental disability can negatively affect the mental health of families due to families' concerns about their children or socioeconomic and cultural reasons. Studies have mostly evaluated the effects of having a child with mental disability on mothers, but research on fathers is limited. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of having a child with mental disability on fathers' anxiety and depression levels. The study was conducted at Düzce University Health Practice and Research Center between December 2022 and May 2023. The study included 252 fathers, 126 fathers with mentally disabled children and 126 fathers without mentally disabled children. A questionnaire form including sociodemographic characteristics, Beck Anxiety and Beck Depression scales were applied face to face. The collected data were evaluated using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 27.0 package program. Statistical significance level was evaluated as p ≤ 0.05. In the analysis of the data, since the data were not normally distributed, Mann-Whitney U test was used when comparing two groups and Kruskal-Wallis test was used for more than two groups. Differences between groups in terms of categorical variables were analyzed by Chi-square test. Correlation analysis was used to determine the relationships between variables. It was found that 28.6% of the fathers with mentally disabled children had different levels of anxiety and 35.7% had depression. Among fathers without mentally disabled children, 19.0% had different levels of anxiety and 27.0% had depression. There was no difference in anxiety levels between fathers with and without mentally disabled children (p=0.181). A statistically significant difference was found between the depression levels of fathers with and without mentally disabled children (p= 0.012). "Severe depression" was significantly higher in fathers with mentally disabled children than in fathers without mentally disabled children. The possibility that fathers in families with children with mental disabilities may encounter mental problems should be evaluated, and fathers should be provided with education, social and mental support.