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. 2024 Aug 13:5:100331.
doi: 10.1016/j.pecinn.2024.100331. eCollection 2024 Dec 15.

Mental health in mothers and fathers of children with chronic disorders

Erica Zahl  1 , Agnes M Willemen  2 , Trude Fredriksen  3 , Solveig M Kirchhofer  1   4 , Torun M Vatne  5 , Stian Orm  5   6 , Matteo Botta  1 , Caitlin Prentice  1 , Krister W Fjermestad  1   5
Affiliations

Mental health in mothers and fathers of children with chronic disorders

Erica Zahl et al. PEC Innov. .

Abstract

Objective: This study applied the Family Systems Illness Model to examine how child disorder severity influences mental health in mothers and fathers of children with chronic (mainly developmental) disorders (CD).

Methods: We measured parental mental health and perceived child disorder severity among 204 mothers and 125 fathers of 220 children with CD and compared the mental health scores with norms. We analyzed how much of the variance in parental mental health was explained by child disorder severity, including discrepancy between maternally and paternally perceived severity.

Results: Compared to norms, we found elevated mental health problems in both mothers (d = 0.45) and fathers (d = 0.20) of children with CD. Mothers had higher scores than fathers on both mental health problems (d = 0.63) and severity (d = 0.43). Perceived disorder severity was similarly associated with mental health problems for mothers (β = 0.23) and fathers (β = 0.34). Discrepancy between maternal and paternal perceived disorder severity did not influence parental mental health.

Conclusion: Findings suggest gender-specific challenges in parenting children with CD. Subjective perception of disorder severity plays a substantial role for parental mental health.

Innovation: This comparative study of mothers and fathers contributes to a predominantly mother-focused field.

Keywords: Chronic childhood disorders; Disorder severity; Fathers; Mental health; Mothers.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Erica Zahl reports financial support was provided by Norwegian Women's Public Health Association. Krister W. Fjermestad reports financial support was provided by Research Council of Norway. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Parent SCL90 Scores Compared to Norwegian Norms. GSI = General Symptom Index, SOM = Somatization, OCD = Obsessive-Compulsive symptoms, IS = Interpersonal Sensitivity, DEP = Depression, ANX = Anxiety, HOS = Hostility, PHOB = Phobia, PAR = Paranoia, PSY = Psychoticism. Effect sizes are Cohen's d. with small. medium. and large effect sizes represented by 0.2. 0.5. and 0.8. *Significant at the 0.05 level when compared with Norwegian norms.** Significant at the 0.01 level when compared with Norwegian norms.
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