Psychosocial risk and resistance factors among children with chronic illness, healthy siblings, and healthy controls

Abstract

Psychosocial risk and resistance factors within the domains of parental functioning, family stressors, and family resources were examined as predictors of psychological adjustment and physical problems in juvenile rheumatic disease patients (N = 93), their healthy siblings (N = 72), and demographically matched healthy controls (N = 93). Family socioeconomic status and background variables showed few consistent relationships with child functioning. However, a constellation of risk and resistance factors tended to show comparable associations with functioning for patients, siblings, and controls. Higher parental depression and medical symptoms and more family stressors, sibling problems, and burden of illness on the family predicted more problems among the patients. These relationships held when disease duration and severity were controlled. For the siblings, increased parental and patient dysfunction, more family stressors, and less family cohesion and expressiveness were associated with more problems. Although the associations were not as strong, mothers' depression and lack of family cohesion and expressiveness also were related to more adjustment problems among the control children. These findings imply that there may be a general association between certain risk and resistance factors and childhood adaptation.

Educational and occupational outcomes among young adults with juvenile idiopathic arthritis

“…Contrary to expectations, disease factors also did not play a large role, except that greater time since diagnosis was associated with lower self-report of job competence. Although some research has found that disease severity and duration are associated with psychosocial outcomes for children and adults with JIA (19,21), earlier research with the current sample did not (14,22). This may result from the relatively small number of participants who had more severe forms of arthritis in our sample.…”

“…However, a few studies have found that these variables may be risk factors for other psychosocial outcomes in children. For example, adjustment problems have been associated with greater disease duration (21) and severity (19). In the current sample, no differences in adjustment were found based on disease severity during earlier childhood (i.e., ages 8 -15 years) (14,22).…”

The Association of Maternal Psychopathology and Family Socioeconomic Status with Psychological Problems in Obese Children

“…4 No.1 Jan. 1996 71 status than to their own physical status is consistent with the findings across other pediatric illnesses. For example, Daniels and colleagues (13) demonstrated that psychosocial functioning of preadolescents with juvenile rheumatic disease was still significantly related to parent psychosocial functioning after disease duration and severity were controlled. Similarly, the psychosocial adjustment of individuals with childhood cancer has been shown to be more related to parental psychological distress than to illness variables (41).…”

A Longitudinal Study of Siblings of Children with Chronic Disabilities

“…While some studies have used data from fathers (8), siblings (9), or teachers (10,11), mothers have generally been the main respondents (12,13). In addition to the lack of a longitudinal perspective, inconsistent findings may also relate to other methodological issues such as the outcome measures and instruments used, populations studied, procedures used, and number of respondents included (14).…”