Parental mood, emotional distress, and coping in families with a head-injured offspring
Date
1986
Authors
O'Brien, Kevin Page
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Abstract
This study attempted to describe and evaluate parental mood, emotional distress, coping, and physical health in families with a head- injured offspring. Interview and assessment data were obtained 2 - 4 years post- injury. In order to characterize those features unique to parents living with a head- injured patient, two control groups were utilized for between-group comparisons and included parents of offspring with orthopedic injury, as well as parents of non- injured offspring. Data from mothers and fathers were examined and analyzed separately.
Based on previous research in the area, it was hypothesized that caring for, and living with, a head- injured offspring would place stress upon parents and that this would be reflected by an increased risk of mood disturbance, emotional distress, and physical illness. This hypothesis was not supported as group comparisons failed to yield significant differences between parents of head- injured, orthopedically- injured, and non-injured offspring. As well, no quantitative or qualitative differences in coping patterns emerged between parents of head- injured, orthopedically- injured and non- injured offspring.
Another objective of this study was to examine the relationship between parental adjustment, coping, and physical health and the degree of offspring dysfunction. For these analyses the entire sample of offspring were included. Several aspects of the offspring' level of functioning were examined, including mood, emotional distress, extent of physical impairment, and degree of psychosocial dysfunction.
It was hypothesized that the degree of parental anxiety, depression, emotional distress, physical health and extent of parental coping efforts would be negatively correlated with the offsprings' degree of health- related dysfunction. Canonical correlation analyses failed to detect a significant relationship between parent and offspring characteristics and reasons for this lack of association were discussed.
Inspection of the intercorrelation matrices however, suggested that aspects of offsprings' mood and emotional well-being were associated with mothers' anxiety, depressive symptomatology, emotional distress, and health status. No such relationships appeared for the fathers' sample. The extent of mood disturbance and emotional distress for both parents correlated with the degree of psychosocial dysfunction that they attributed to their offspring. In contrast, the degree of physical impairment attributed to the offspring was not associated with any aspect of parental mood, coping, or health status.
Supplemental analyses were conducted that focused on the degree to which parents and offspring agreed with respect to the offsprings' functional status at time of follow-up. Lack of concordance between parents and offspring with regards to offsprings' psychosocial functioning was associated with aspects of parental mood and emotional distress. In contrast, as for ratings of the offsprings' level of physical impairment, the degree of parent-offspring concordance was not associated with parental adjustment, coping, and health status.