Muñoz-Peña Irene J, González-Gutiérrez José L, Yunta-Rua Laura, Pacho-Hernández Juan C, López-López Almudena
Department of Psychology, Rey Juan Carlos University, Alcorcón, Spain.
Front Psychol. 2025 Jan 9;15:1473955. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1473955. eCollection 2024.
Suffering from chronic pain (CP) and coping with parenthood can be challenging for parental mental health. Pain can hinder the ability to deal with demands related to parenthood, which can negatively affect their psychological well-being because of unmet caregiving expectations.
Considering the limited amount of research regarding the mental health of parents with CP, the study's main aim was to test a predictive model based on previous scientific literature, using structural equation analysis, in which parental competence and parental guilt partially mediate the relationship between parental stress and depression. To examine the moderating role of CP, the model was tested on a group of parents with CP and a control group of parents without CP. The study included 380 parents from all over Spain, of which 200 formed the group with CP and 180 participants formed the control group. A cross-sectional design was used to collect data through self-report measures.
Higher levels of stress, guilt, and depression were observed in parents with CP. Based on the results, both groups of parents showed a good fit with the predictive model; parental stress was a good predictor of symptoms of depression both in parents with and without CP, parental competence mediated the relationship between parental stress and depression, being the relationship between competence and depression partially mediated by parental guilt.
This study is the first to quantitatively examine parental competence and guilt in parents with CP, and to analyze their role as mediators between parental stress and depression in both CP and healthy parents. The results confirm previous qualitative findings and extend them to parents with CP, showing that the tested model aligns with the main theories on stress, self-efficacy, and depression, as well as existing literature on CP. These results suggest the relevance of addressing parental stress levels for reducing and preventing depressive symptoms in parents with CP and the importance of working on guilt reduction and enhancing competence in order to improve the emotional well-being of parents. The need to take into account the mental health of parents with CP to improve their quality of life is discussed.
患有慢性疼痛（CP）并应对为人父母的角色，对父母的心理健康而言可能具有挑战性。疼痛会妨碍应对与为人父母相关要求的能力，由于照顾期望未得到满足，这可能会对他们的心理健康产生负面影响。
鉴于关于患有CP的父母心理健康的研究数量有限，该研究的主要目的是基于先前的科学文献，使用结构方程分析来测试一个预测模型，其中父母能力和父母内疚感部分介导了父母压力与抑郁之间的关系。为了检验CP的调节作用，该模型在一组患有CP的父母和一组未患CP的父母对照组上进行了测试。该研究纳入了来自西班牙各地的380名父母，其中200名组成了患有CP的组，180名参与者组成了对照组。采用横断面设计，通过自我报告测量来收集数据。
在患有CP的父母中观察到更高水平的压力、内疚感和抑郁。基于结果，两组父母都与预测模型拟合良好；父母压力是患有和未患CP的父母抑郁症状的良好预测指标，父母能力介导了父母压力与抑郁之间的关系，能力与抑郁之间的关系部分由父母内疚感介导。
本研究首次定量考察了患有CP的父母的父母能力和内疚感，并分析了它们在患有CP的父母和健康父母中作为父母压力与抑郁之间中介的作用。结果证实了先前的定性研究结果，并将其扩展到患有CP的父母，表明所测试的模型与关于压力、自我效能和抑郁的主要理论以及关于CP的现有文献一致。这些结果表明，解决父母压力水平对于减少和预防患有CP的父母的抑郁症状具有相关性，以及致力于减少内疚感和提高能力以改善父母的情绪健康的重要性。讨论了考虑患有CP的父母的心理健康以提高他们生活质量的必要性。
