The Association between Cognitive Emotion Regulation (CER) and Quality of Life for Parents of People with Developmental Disabilities in South Korea

Background

An individual's Cognitive Emotion Regulation (CER) is recognized as their positive or negative coping mechanisms after experiencing adversity. When managing traumatic events, CER can be applied to parents of people with developmental disabilities for a variety of reasons. In contrast, CER research has not been applied to people who should be able to apply these strategies with ease, such as caregivers of people with developmental disabilities. A significant association has been found between CER and quality of life in previous research, which highlights the importance of studying this relationship. Therefore, this study examines the associations between CER and quality of life among parents of people with developmental disabilities in South Korea.

Methods

A sample of data was collected from parents' associations and welfare facilities for the disabled in Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Incheon, as well as other major provinces in South Korea. During February to April 2021, 200 people participated in the survey, and data from 200 of them were analyzed. This study was approved by the Institute Review Board. The CERQ (Garnefski et al., 2001) was divided into nine sub-dimensions (self-blame, acceptance, rumination, positive refocusing, refocus on planning, positive reappraisal, putting into perspective, catastrophizing, and blaming others) to identify predictors of quality of life using hierarchical multiple regression. In the initial analysis, we considered parents and children characteristics. In the second analysis, we included cognitive emotion regulation. The analyses were performed based on the nine sub-scales of the CERQ.

Results

The initial analysis identified the relationship between sociodemographic factors and quality of life. The household economic status was associated with quality of life (β = .239, p < .001. Also, the severity of disability (β = -.208, p < .01) was significant association with parent’s quality of life. They accounted for 20.9% of quality of life. As for sub dimensions of CERQ, the acceptance was associated with quality of life (β = .167, p < .05) among positive strategies. However, the rumination (β = -.207, p < .05) and catastrophizing (β = -.484, p < .001) were significant associated with parent’s quality of life among negative strategies. they accounted for 57.4% of quality of life.

Implications

We found that negative CER strategies (Cognitive Emotion Regulation) were strongly associated with lower quality of life compared with positive strategies. Specifically, the negative strategies (rumination and catastrophizing) were stronger predictors of quality of life than positive strategies (such as acceptance). Furthermore, the findings indicated that both positive and negative strategies had an impact on quality of life simultaneously, and particularly, catastrophizing was a stronger predictor of parents' quality of life than rumination or acceptance. These findings suggest that policymakers and practitioners need to develop intervention strategies that increase positive strategies like acceptance while reducing negative strategies like rumination and catastrophizing.