Amostra

The sample members were recruited via three strategies. For the majority, recruitment was accomplished with the assistance of the state agency on aging and state or county agencies respon-sible for providing services to persons with either mental retarda-tion or mental illness. Others were referred by service providers, and still others were nominated by participating sample mem-bers. All sample members volunteered to participate. The recruit-ment procedures for the two groups were identical. The samples were different in the sources of caregiving stress. Mothers of adults with mental illness had to contend with a greater number of behavior problems in their adult child than mothers of adults with mental retardation (3.0 versus 1.9, respec-tively), while mothers of adults with mental retardation provided more help to their adult child than mothers of adults with mental illness did (helping with 6.8 versus 3.3 tasks, respectively). Mothers of adults with mental illness were more likely to focus on and vent their emotions than mothers of adults with mental re-tardation. Although not an explicit source of caregiving stress, the sample of adults with mental illness included more sons (72.6%) than the sample of adults with mental retardation. (53.9%). sons Prior to the Time 2 data collection, 30.1% of the adults with mental retardation were on a waiting list for residential services, and 34.2% of the adults with mental illness experienced a psychi atric crisis (defined as hospitalization or involvement with the criminal justice system). At Time 2, 10.2% (n = 31) of the adults. with mental retardation and 31.5% (n = 23) of the adults with mental illness had moved away from the parental home. Of these adults, the majority had lived away from the parental home for at least one year prior to the Time 2 point of data collection (25 of the adults with mental retardation and 18 of the adults with men-tal illness), and all had established what the mothers hoped would be permanent homes elsewhere All adults with mental illness had been diagnosed by a psy-chiatrist as having a serious mental illness, including schizophre nia (70%), bipolar disorder (19%), major depression (7%), or other psychiatric diagnosis (4%). The adults with mental retarda-tion had primarily mild (35%) or moderate (45%) retardation, while the remaining 20% had severe or profound retardation. More than one-third (41%) had Down syndrome. The initial samples in these studies included 461 mothers of adults with mental retardation (half of whom lived in Wisconsin and half in Massachusetts) and 107 mothers of adults with mental illness (all of whom lived in Wisconsin). The samples used in this paper included 308 families of adults with mental retardation and 73 families of adults with mental illness. Excluded were families in which the adult with disabilities had died or the mother had died or become incapacitated during the intervening period of time 1n = 27 for families of adults with mental retardation and 10 for families of adults with mental illness), families in which the adult with mental retardation had moved out of the home prior to the first point of data collection used in this analysis (15), and families for whom there were missing data on any study variable at Time I or Time 2 ( n = 111 for families of adults with mental re-tardation and 24 families of adults with mental illness). For the sample with mental retardation, the families excluded due to missing data differed from families included in this analysis only with respect to the size of the mother's social support net-work. Those with missing data had smaller networks (7.2 people versus 8.2, 2.29, p=. overline 0 * 23 ) . For the sample with mental illness, the families excluded due to missing data differed from families included in the analysis only with respect to marital status of the mother. Those with missing data were less likely to be married (39.1% vs. 68.5%, chi square p = 0.01 . The characteristics of the two samples appear in Table 1. The two groups of mothers were similar in several respects. Both were about 65 years of age, on average, and about two-thirds were married at the time of the study. They were also similar in health status, as most (70.8% of the mothers of the adults with mental retardation and 80.8% of the mothers of adults with men tal illness) were in excellent or good health. Mothers of adults. with mental retardation had somewhat larger social support net-works than mothers of adults with mental illness (8.2 versus 6.9 persons)