The Latent Profiles of the Mental Health for Adult Non-Disabled Siblings of Persons with Developmental Disabilities and the Relationships with Parental Attachment in South Korea

Background/Purpose: Caring for children with developmental disabilities(DD) hinders parents from forming stable attachments with their non-disabled children. This circumstance accumulates negative effects on the mental health of non-disabled siblings(NDS) of persons with DD.

Face value culture, scholasticism, strict social norms, less accurate knowledge of DD, and attribution of disability to the family have deepened affiliate stigma and made it difficult for NDS to have self-acceptance and this situation eventually causes their social anxiety, especially in South Korea. Previous studies showed that affiliate stigma, self-acceptance, and social anxiety are inconsistently associated in various personal and familial contexts. Little is known about the complex psychological characteristics of NDS related to parental attachment. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to (1) identify the profiles of the mental health of NDS using three indicators: self-acceptance, affiliate stigma, social anxiety, and (2) examine the associations between the identified profiles of mental health of NDS and parental attachment.

Methods:

The final analysis sample included 164 NDS (Intellectual disabilities = 90, autism = 74) from the 2020 Seoul City Government's Survey on Social Emotions of NDS. First, Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) was conducted to identify the mental health of NDS using three indicators: self-acceptance, affiliate stigma, and social anxiety.

Second, Multinomial Logistic Analysis (MLA) was used to examine the associations between the identified profiles of mental health of NDS and the parental attachment as an independent variable. Control variables include (e.g., age, gender, education, parent’s income, and whether to live with siblings with DD (SDD), challenging behavior, autism, school attendance). Self-acceptance was assessed by the subscale of PWBS (Psychological Well-Being Scale). Affiliate stigma was measured by ASS (Affiliate Stigma Scale: Chang et al., 2015). Social anxiety was assessed by 14 items of SAD (Social Avoidance and Distress scale), which was developed by Watson and Friend (1969) and adapted by Lee et. al. (1997), Parental attachment was measured by 25 items of IPPA (Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment), used widely in counseling and theoretical research.

Results:

First, the LPA analysis identified three latent profiles of mental health for NSD:

'Low-risk group highest self-acceptance (Profile1, 63.8%)', 'High-risk group highest affiliate-stigma (Profile2, 18.8%), and 'High-risk group highest social-anxiety and lowest self-acceptance (Profile3, 17.4%)'.

Second, MLA yielded central findings as below. Parental attachment strongly influenced the likelihood to belong to Profile2 or Profile3. As parental attachment to NDS diminished, NDS were more likely to have affiliate stigma or social anxiety than to have self-acceptance. In addition, challenging behavior of SDD or whether to live with SDD or Whether SDD had an autistic disorder strongly influences the likelihood to belong to Profile2 in which NDS had higher affiliate stigma than those in other profiles.

Conclusions and Implications: The current study provides important evidence regarding the relationships between affiliate stigma, social anxiety and self-acceptance and supports that parental attachment can play a significant role in reducing negative emotions of NDS. This study highlights that community-based interventions and programs should address the relationship with parents for NDS to improve their mental health.