Análise da rede pessoal de mães de crianças com paralisia cerebral: estresse e apoio

Abstract

This thesis investigated stress and social support indexes in the personal networks of mothers of children with cerebral palsy. To answer this objective, thesis was composed by three studies: the first one analyzed the indicators of parental stress in the personal networks of mothers of children with cerebral palsy; the second evaluated the perception of social support, associating it with personal network characteristics of the mothers; the third identified the topology of the maternal personal network and the indicators of support and parental stress in a general and individual way. The main results showed that mothers experienced a high level of total parental stress, an aspect that was significantly associated with cohesive networks (high density, transitivity and clustering coefficient) and with low indexes of centrality (degree and betweenness). The investigation of support in personal network relationships showed that caregivers perceive that they have a high social support. The emotional one was the most accessible, while the material and informational were less frequent. Similar to the result of stress, this perception of support was associated to the personal network of high cohesion (high density, transitivity and clustering coefficient) and low centrality (degree and betweenness). Thus, although most of the mothers investigated have high levels of parental stress, most maternal networks are made up of supportive people. The topology of the personal networks of mothers with high and low stress levels showed that in both situations there was a diversity of cohesion, centralities and types of ties that did not point to tendencies of association with the level of parental stress. The three studies together allowed us to conclude that adjustments of mothers of children with cerebral palsy to parental stress and social support are diverse, varying in combination with the heterogeneous topological characteristics of their personal networks.