Mothers' and fathers' responses to their child's pain moderate the relationship between the child's pain catastrophizing and disability

摘要

Preliminary evidence suggests that pain catastrophizing in children may be important in understandinghow parents respond to their child’s pain. However, no study has investigated whether parental responses,in turn, moderate the impact of child’s catastrophizing upon pain outcomes. The present study wasdesigned to address this, and investigated the association of the child’s catastrophizing with different typesof parental responses (ie, solicitousness, discouragement and coping promoting responses) and the extentto which parental responses moderate the association between the child’s catastrophizing and disability.Participants were 386 school children and their parents. Analyses revealed significant associations betweenthe child’s pain catastrophizing and parental responses, but with mothers and fathers evidencing differentpatterns; ie, higher levels of the child’s catastrophizing were significantly associated with lower levels ofsolicitousness by fathers, and with higher levels of discouragement by mothers. Moderation analyses indicatedthat father’s solicitiousness moderated the association between catastrophizing and disability; thepositive association between catastrophizing and the child’s disability was further strengthened whenfathers reported low levels of solicitousness, but became less pronounced when fathers reported high levelsof solicitousness. Findings also revealed a moderating impact of mothers’ and fathers’ promotion of theirchild’s well behaviour/coping. Specifically, the detrimental impact of child catastrophizing upon disabilitywas less pronounced when parents reported high promotion of their child’s well behaviours/coping. Thefindings of the present study suggest the importance of assessing and targeting parental responses to theirchild’s pain to alter the adverse impact of the child’s pain catastrophizing on pain outcomes.