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4 themes to experience of caregivers of Misophonics

Molthrop et al. (2026) surveyed 22 US caregivers of individuals with misophonia and used reflexive thematic analysis on open-ended responses to characterize the caregiver experience through four interrelated themes. The household itself is reshaped by the disorder, with disrupted mealtimes, family members serving as trigger sources, a chronically tense atmosphere, and the child's withdrawal from shared activities. Caregivers in turn carry a heavy emotional toll of grief, guilt, and depletion alongside sustained lifestyle sacrifice, though a few report positive impacts such as validation through shared diagnosis. Layered onto this are financial pressures from treatment and accommodation costs, insufficient insurance coverage, and lost work time, as well as non-financial barriers including a scarcity of misophonia-aware providers, a lack of effective interventions, and limited family awareness of the disorder itself (Molthrop et al., 2026).