Positive impact and its relationship to well-being in parents of children with intellectual disability: a literature review

Aim: This review focuses on parent carers of children with an intellectual disability. The aim of the review is to assess the relationship between positive impact and parental well-being and the factors that affect this relationship, including challenging behaviour, syndrome type and gender of parent.\nMethod: A structured search was conducted in the databases of Psycinfo and Ovid Medline and 16 articles were included in the review.\nResults: A relationship between positive impact and parental well-being was found, however this was affected by extraneous variables including partner well-being, challenging behaviour and syndrome characteristics. Other variables that affected this relationship were type of coping strategies employed and individual parent characteristics including self esteem and optimism.\nConclusions: A relationship between positive impact and well-being exists but remains unclear due to the number of extraneous variables that may affect this relationship and that require further research, including cultural influence and socio economic position. This relationship has relevance when designing interventions for families as focusing on increasing positive impacts and reducing the influence of variables that interact negatively with positive impact and well-being may increase parental well-being and therefore capacity for coping.