Published Paper Details:

ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: A mentally retarded child in the family is usually a serious stress factor for the parents. It often requires a reorientation and re-evaluation of family goals, responsibilities and relationships. In India the majority of persons with mental retardation have traditionally been cared for by their families. Throughout the world, parenting today is more complicated than it was in the past. Many adults or parents do not live with extended families and thus there is little opportunity for parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles of older generations to give advice and emotional support. Economic and social conditions encourage or require both parents to have jobs outside the home. This greater burden placed on the people working in mentally disabled home to provide tender care and love towards the children as a caretakers. MATERIAL AND METHOD: The research aimed at assessing the effectiveness of structured teaching program on knowledge regarding home care of mentally challenged children among their caretakers coming to psychiatric OPD of tertiary care hospitals in city, the research design used for study was pre experimental, one group pre-test post-test design with quantitative research approach. Convenient sampling method is used to select samples. RESULT: The present study shows that, in pretest, 13% of the caretakers had poor knowledge (score 0-10), 66% of them had average knowledge (score 11-20) and 21% of them had good knowledge (score 21-30) regarding home care of mentally challenged children. In posttest, 99% of them had good knowledge (score 21-30) and 1% of them had poor knowledge (score 0-10) regarding home care of mentally challenged children. This indicates that the knowledge regarding home care of mentally challenged children among caretakers improved remarkably after structured teaching program. CONCLUSION: The main aim of the study was to assess the knowledge among caretakers regarding home care of mentally challenged children and to administer a structured teaching program based on knowledge of home care of mentally challenged children. The structured teaching program helps the caretakers to enhance their knowledge regarding home care of mentally challenged children. The f conclusions were drawn on the basis of the findings of the study are the knowledge scores among most of caretakers were poor and average. And the structured teaching program for caretakers helps them to learn more about home care of mentally challenged children.