Abstract
The serious illness or death of a caregiver are two of the most distressing events that can befall a child, and are often temporally linked. Although both adversities may impact children’s mental health, studies have not yet attempted to disentangle the effects of parental illness versus those of parental death with regard to children’s psychological functioning. Further, there has been little empirical investigation of potential factors that may diminish risk for psychopathology following either of these adversities. The current study evaluated levels of anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) in youth age 7–13 grappling with either parental cancer (N = 31) or parental death (N = 32) and examined potential predictors of these mental health outcomes across both groups of children. Youth contending with parental cancer exhibited lower levels of PTSS than children who had experienced the death of a parent, but both groups exhibited similar levels of anxiety and depression. Expressive coping was associated with lower levels of PTSS, anxiety, and depression across both groups. An interaction effect revealed that for the bereaved group only, positive parental reinforcement and supportive caregiver communication were inversely associated with PTSS. These findings provide a foundation for future work designed to identify factors associated with distinct mental health outcomes among children facing parental cancer and/or parental death.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Michelle Belke, Alena Grieser, Heather Hammerstrom, Harriett Jones, Georgia Stamatopoulos, and Amanda Tarantowski for their assistance with conducting interviews. We also thank Britney Wardecker and Emilie Lerner for their assistance with project coordination. We greatly appreciate the help of Damia December, Valerie Elsesser, Joanna Gross, Kara Koppinger, Mirele Mann, Meredith Merlanti, Michael Shain, Jerri Bamberger, Monica Arkin, Maggie O’Reilly Treter, Megan Ramthun, Madison Kraus, and Hannah Wolfson for their assistance with data management and data entry. Finally, we wish to acknowledge the Gilda’s Club of Grand Rapids staff for their administrative support, and all participating children, parents, and guardians. This research was supported in part by Grants NIMH K08 MH76078, Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research Grant, Todd Ouida Clinical Scholars Award, the Rachel Upjohn Clinical Scholars Award, the Laurence Polatsch Memorial Fund, and the Lynn Wilson Memorial Fund given to Dr. Kaplow.
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Authors do not have any conflicts of interest to disclose.
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All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee review board and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Informed consent/assent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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Howell, K.H., Barrett-Becker, E.P., Burnside, A.N. et al. Children Facing Parental Cancer Versus Parental Death: The Buffering Effects of Positive Parenting and Emotional Expression. J Child Fam Stud 25, 152–164 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-015-0198-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-015-0198-3