[Prevention of sudden infant death by monitoring: effects on psychological stress of involved parents].

Effects on the emotional distress of addicted parents. The present paper focuses on the emotional distress that parents may experience during their use of a monitor to prevent the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Since the parents are confronted with the risk of a life threatening event, it is important to know more about influential and relief factors to be able to contribute to the emotional support of parents. 229 parents of children whose siblings died of SIDS of children with an otherwise increased risk participated at the present questionnaire study. The results showed a lower emotional distress for parents with a previous SIDS experience than for parents confronted with an increased risk for other reasons. In general, the emotional distress was higher for mothers than for fathers. During the monitoring interval there are only small changes of the emotional distress experienced by the parents. The rate of false alarms leads to the highest impact on the emotional condition, while the highest relief results from a good quality of the monitoring instructions and from the knowledge thereby acquired by the parents. The significance of the results for the support of parents is evaluated and discussed.