Religious coping among caregivers of differently-abled children

Caregivers of differently-abled children go through significant challenges in their lives. A number of studies have shown the impact of child disability on the caregivers, although only a handful of studies have shown the different coping strategies used by caregivers in order to buffer against their stressful life events. Hence, the aim of the present research was to study religious coping among the caregivers of differently-abled children with respect to their age and type of child disability. Two hundred caregivers from different rehabilitation schools and centers of the Kashmir valley were selected through a purposive sampling technique. The mean age and standard deviation of the caregivers were 40.04 and 5.31, respectively. Welch's test, followed by the Games-Howell Post-hoc test, were carried out to analyze the data. The results revealed that children with older caregivers (40-52 years old) scored high on religious coping as compared to children with younger caregivers (27-39 years old). Furthermore, results also revealed that all the caregivers use religious coping as a means to cope with their day-today stressful life events, except for caregivers with visually-impaired children, who practice the strategy less as compared to their counterparts.