Problems of mothers raising a child with intellectual disability

Background
Children with intellectual disability need special help from their parents, proportional to the type and degree of their disability. They require individual treatment, and their development depends not only on their health status but also on environmental conditions, measures and actions taken by supporting institutions, and social attitudes. Most often, mothers engage in a child care by giving up their own professional career, interests and social interactions. While raising a child, they face many adversities, and they are often helpless to overcome them. The aim of this work is to analyze the most important problems of mothers raising a child with intellectual disability.

Material and methods
The research was of a qualitative nature. Case studies were used based on the method of unstructured interview and structured interview. Each interview lasted about 2 hours. The participants of interviews were four mothers bringing up children with intellectual disabilities.

Results
The mothers who participated in the research pointed out negative social attitudes in the environment. They reported ambiguous situations in institutions supporting the family and the problems in the health care of their disabled children. Women's dreams focused around a child, his or her health and future.

Conclusions
There is a need to formulate procedures for dealing with an intellectually disabled patient in hospital wards, to attempt to regulate the institutional support for daily activities of adult, dependent people with intellectual disabilities.