Mental Health Outcomes Among Parents of Children With a Chronic Disease During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Parental Burn-Out

Abstract

Objective The COVID-19 pandemic and associated quarantine measures highly impacted parental psychological well-being. Parents of children with chronic diseases might be specifically vulnerable as they already face multiple challenges to provide adequate care for their child. The research questions of the current study were twofold: (a) to examine whether parents of children with a chronic disease experienced more anxiety and depression compared to parents of healthy children and (b) to examine a series of risk factors for worsened well-being (i.e., depression, anxiety, and sleep problems), such as sociodemographic variables, COVID-19-specific variables (i.e., financial worries, living space, and perceived quality of health care), and parental psychological experiences (i.e., parental burn-out and less positive parenting experiences). Methods Parents of children with a chronic disease (i.e., the clinical sample; N = 599 and 507 for Research Questions 1 and 2, respectively) and parents of healthy children (i.e., the reference sample: N = 417) filled out an online survey. Results Findings demonstrated that the parents in the clinical sample reported higher levels of anxiety than parents in the reference sample. Analyses within the clinical sample indicated that COVID-19-specific stressors and parental psychological experiences were associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, and sleep problems. Mediation analyses furthermore indicated that the association of COVID-19-specific stressors with all outcome measures was mediated by parental burn-out. Conclusions Parents of children with a chronic disease constitute a vulnerable group for worse well-being during the current pandemic. Findings suggest interventions directly targeting parental burn-out are warranted.

Children and adolescents' emotional problems during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

“…Other studies reported similar findings [ 35 , 37 – 40 ]. This is not surprising, given that comorbidities represent a risk factor for more severe covid-19 presentations [ 41 ] and might be associated with higher levels of distress in both children and parents of those children [ 42 ], and more strict social distancing [ 43 ].…”

The Impact of COVID-19 on Parent Mental Health: Frameworks for Risk Assessment and Parent Interventions

“… Wauters et al (2022 ) assessed multiple categories of risk that may have contributed to parent mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Of those explored, parental burn-out and financial worries correlated most strongly with parental psychological functioning.…”

“…Although researchers have addressed the tremendous impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on parent and child mental health (e.g., Feinberg et al, 2022 ; Russell et al, 2020 ), fewer efforts have focused specifically on parents of children with chronic medical conditions, who are generally at higher risk for psychological distress. Wauters et al (2022 ) aimed to address this gap in the literature by surveying a broad sample of parents from pediatric clinics in Belgium during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“… Wauters et al (2022 ) found that parents of children with chronic diseases reported significantly more anxiety compared to parents of healthy children. Furthermore, parent mental health outcomes (i.e., anxiety, depression, sleep, and burn-out) were significantly correlated with COVID-19 stressors including financial worries, less living space, and lower perceived quality of healthcare.…”

“…Several areas of focus from Wauters et al (2022 ) offer guidance for further exploration of caregiver wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic including (a) exploring varying approaches to assessing risk factors, (b) burn-out and positive parenting as intervention targets, and (c) the importance of inclusion of racially and ethnically diverse participants.…”