Parental Awareness of the Psychosocial Needs of Children with Neurodevelopmental Disabilities in India: A Cross-Sectional Study: Community-based rehabilitation

Background: Parents of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities play a critical role in identifying and responding to their child’s psychosocial needs. However, the relationship between parental awareness and demographic characteristics such as gender, education level, socioeconomic status, age and domicile needs to be understood but remains an unexplored area. Evidence from South Asian populations remains scarce.

Aim: The study aimed to explore parental awareness of the psychosocial needs of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities aged 6 – 12 years and to determine the associations with gender, educational qualification, socioeconomic status, age and domicile.

Method: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted with 30 parents comprising 18 mothers and 12 fathers whose children had a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Intellectual Disability or Specific Learning Disability in Delhi - National Capital Region, India. Participants were selected through purposive sampling from clinical and community-based intervention settings. Data was collected through structured face-to-face interviews. A ‘Psychosocial Needs Checklist’ developed by the researcher, which consisted of 30 items across emotional, behavioural, social, cognitive and adaptive domains, was administered. Content validity was established through expert review by 24 rehabilitation professionals and the tool demonstrated excellent internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.919). Data were analyzed using non-parametric tests Kruskal – Wallis H test, Mann – Whitney U test and Spearman’s rank correlation.

Results: Parental awareness showed significant variation across the diagnostic groups in a decreasing order such as being the highest among parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, followed by those of children with Specific Learning Disability and those of children with Intellectual Disability. Mothers demonstrated significantly greater levels of awareness of psychosocial needs than fathers. Awareness levels increased consistently with higher levels of education, with graduates and parents holding professional degrees showing significantly greater awareness. Socio-economic status was significantly associated with awareness as parents from high socio-economic status families demonstrated significantly greater awareness compared to middle and low socio-economic status groups. Parental awareness varied by age group as parents aged 31 – 40 years showed higher awareness, though the oldest group, which consisted of those aged 41 – 50 years, recorded the lowest scores. Urban and semi-urban parents were significantly more aware than rural parents, indicating a pronounced geographic gap.

Conclusion: Parental awareness of psychosocial needs significantly varies across all demographic variables. These disparities signal the importance of targeted psychosocial awareness programmes and parent-training interventions, particularly for fathers, rural families and those from low-socio-economic status groups.