Quality of Life and Coping Strategies in Children with and Without Learning Disabilities from the Perspective of Their Parents and Caregivers.

Background: Children with learning disability (LD) often experience a poor quality of life (QOL) compared to their peers without a known history of LD. Coping strategies are known to play a role in influencing their QOL.

Objectives: This study aims to compare the QOL and coping strategies between children with and without LD. Additionally, it seeks to evaluate how coping strategies impact the QOL of children with LD in the Eastern Governorate of Saudi Arabia.

Method: A representative sample of 6 to 18-year-old children with (n = 97) and without (n = 89) LD were recruited from different schools. The Short Form-12 (SF-12) health survey was used to assess both physical and mental health components, while the validated Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced Inventory (Brief-COPE) measured coping strategies. Data analysis included descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, percentage), independent t-tests, Spearman's correlation, and binary logistic regression.

Results: The results reveal that participants with LD show poor QOL in terms of role functioning, bodily pain, general health, vitality, social functioning, role emotion, and mental health in comparison to non-disabled children. Participants with LD show greater reliance on substance abuse and religious coping than non-disabled children. The results clearly indicate a fairly to moderately strong correlation between the physical component summary and all approaches to coping strategies except religious coping. Of all the approaches to coping methods, we observe a weak correlation among denial (r = -0.17, p < 0.05), substance abuse (r = -0.15, p < 0.05), and behavioral disengagement (r = -0.18, p < 0.05) with the mental component summary aspect of QOL. The results of logistic regression analysis indicate that grade (OR = 3.79; p = 0.01) is significantly related to LD. The physical component summary score is significantly associated with denial (β = -0.33, CI = -6.87--2.19, p < 0.01), and substance abuse (β = -0.14, CI = -4.96-0.40, p < 0.05), while the mental component summary is significantly associated with active coping (β = -0.30, CI = -4.50-0.76, p < 0.01), behavioral disengagement (β = -0.20, CI = -4.48-0.30, p < 0.05), and humor coping strategy (β = 0.22, CI = 0.06-4.55, p < 0.05).

Conclusion: These findings are relevant to researchers, psychologists, special educators, teachers, and clinicians, given the need to understand the coping variables to improve the QOL of these learning-disabled children.