Health-related Quality of Life of Intellectually Disabled Children Attending a Special School in Puducherry-A Cross-sectional Study

Introduction: Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is a measure of an individual's psychosocial, emotional, and physical well-being. Around 1 in 20 children are less than 15 years of age and are living with a moderate-to-severe form of disability. Thus, our study aims to determine the HRQOL of intellectual disabled (ID) children attending a special school in Puducherry and to determine the socio-demographic factors influencing the level of HRQOL.

Methodology: A cross-sectional analytical study was conducted among 350 ID children attending a selected special school in Puducherry over 1 year. By the universal sampling method, all the caregivers of ID children were recruited and the parent proxy form of Pediatric Quality of life Inventory scale version 4.0 (PedsQL ver 4.0) was used to assess the level of HRQOL of ID children. The data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science version 16.0 (SPSS ver. 16.0) and the statistical significance was set at value <0.05.

Results: Among the 350 respondents, a majority of the caregivers were mothers (78.9%) and 65.7% were homemakers by occupation. Most of the respondents were from the nuclear family (77.7%) and 55.1% were from urban areas. The mean age of ID children was 12 (±3.8) years; 61.2% were males and 40.8% of the children had a moderate form of ID.

Conclusion: The HRQOL of ID children is found to be lower. The factors influencing the lower HRQOL were age, the intelligent quotient (IQ) of ID children, and type of marriage of the caregivers.