Maternal Filicidal Ideation and Marital Status A Case Study of Mothers of Children With Congenital Anomalies In Nairobi County, Kenya

The primary purpose of this study was to establish if there was an association between maternal filicide ideation and marital status among mothers of children with congenital anomalies; a case study of mothers in Nairobi County, Kenya. The objectives of the study were to establish some of the factors that enhance risk of maternal filicide ideation among mothers of children with congenital anomalies; to establish if there was an association between maternal filicide ideation and marital status among mothers of children with congenital anomalies; to examine some of the coping strategies for reducing the risk of maternal filicide ideation among mothers of children with congenital anomalies in Nairobi County Kenya. The targeted population was mothers from the informal settlement of Mathare village and Kahawa West estate. Social learning theory formed the basis of theoretical frame of the study. Focusing on research methodology, mixed research design was employed where both descriptive and correlation design were adopted. Specifically, the sites of study were at Mathare village and Kahawa West estate physiotherapy gyms. Due to the impact of Covid19 pandemic, purposive sampling technique was used to sample the participants of the study and based on Cochran formula the sample size was calculated to 95, however the final response was 73 participants. For data analysis, SPSS version 20 was used to undertake the analyses of the data collected to yield the required response. The result of the study indicated that 20% of the participants were from Mathare village and 53% were from Kahawa West estate. The average age of mothers who participated in the study was 32 years (SD= 1.15). For children, majority 78% were between 2-7 years old with the congenital anomalies such as cerebral palsy, rickets, delayed milestones, meningitis, down syndrome, club foot, mental disability, and hydrocephalus & cerebral palsy. Fifty-three percent of the respondents were single and 47% married. On risk factors to maternal filicide ideation, results showed that most respondents reported feeling overwhelmed having a child with disability, due to lack of finances, stress, loneliness, stigma and marital conflict. On the examining the association between maternal filicidal ideation and marital status in mothers, the study established that there was a significant association between maternal filicide ideation and marital status X2 (23, N = 65) = 36.05, P =0.04 among mothers of children with congenital anomalies. On coping strategies for reducing the risk of maternal filicide ideation, most mothers relied on support groups, sharing with counselor and reliant on their faith to God. This study recommends that each physiotherapy should at least have a counselor to psychologically support mothers, awareness on disability be conducted, and couple therapy should be encouraged among families of children with disability.