| Sumario: | Objective: Parent of children with learning disability faced with several problems in upbringing their child and some of them will end up with psychological distress. This study is to determine the psychological distress among parents of children with learning disability and its association with their coping skills. Design: Cross-sectional study. Method: Parents in which their child had been diagnosed to have learning disability were invited to participate in this study. Malay version DASS 21 and Malay Brief COPE were used to assess psychological distress and coping skills in parents. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 22 was used for the data analysis. Result: Among 74 parents, 29.7% were having depression, 44.6% anxiety, and 24.3% stress. All of them used problem focused coping skills, 66.4% used emotion focused coping skills and 10.8% used less useful coping skills. Behavioral disengagement coping skills were associated with depression, anxiety and stress (p < 0.001, p < 0,001 and p = 0.003) whereas ethnicity was associated with anxiety and stress (p = 0.026 and p = 0.001). Stress was found to be associated with coping skills of self-destraction (p = 0.024). Conclusion: Parents of children with learning disability are at risk of developing psychological distress. Therefore, all parents of children with mental disabilities should be screened for psychological distress and are given some guidance to cope effectively with their problems.
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