Mothers of children with cerebral palsy with or without epilepsy: a quality of life perspective

Purpose. Disability in a child affects not only the child's life but also the family's life. The aim of our study is to verify the quality of life (QOL) of mothers of disabled children with cerebral palsy (CP) with epilepsy compared with non-epilepsy children evaluated in a Brazilian center.Methods. Thirty mothers of disabled children participated in the study. The control group comprised of 18 healthy mothers of children without disabilities. All mothers agreed to participate in the study. They completed the evaluation forms of the SF-36 health survey, a well-documented, self-administered QOL scoring system.Results. The results of our study support the premise that mothers of children with CP, as a group, have poorer QOL than mothers of not disabled children.Conclusions. We also observed that mothers of children with CP and epilepsy have poorer QOL than mothers of children with CP without epilepsy.