Parental psychological distress and quality of life after a prenatal or postnatal diagnosis of congenital anomaly: A controlled comparison study with parents of healthy infants

Abstract

The occurrence of a diagnosis of congenital anomaly during the transition to parenthood adds to an accumulation of stress-inducing events and manifests itself in psychopathological symptoms. Maintaining a positive evaluation of well-being may be understood as a parental resource to deal with the diagnosis. The importance of adopting a comprehensive perspective on parental adjustment is highlighted.

Quality of Life in Mothers of Children with Cerebral Palsy

“…Th e quality of life connected with health is a subjective health condition or experience of health and refers to the impact of disease, damage, disorder, or in short of the health condition on the quality of life in order to be diff erentiated from other aspects of the quality of life. It has a signifi cant clinical interest in the case of family members involved in the treatment, especially in cases when patients are children 2 because diffi culties in the child's development require increased intensity of care, which may become a burden for parents and infl uence their physical and mental health [3][4][5][6][7][8] .…”

Parental Psychological Distress and Confidence After an Infant’s Birth: The Role of Attachment Representations in Parents of Infants with Congenital Anomalies and Parents of Healthy Infants

“…Furthermore, although higher levels of psychological distress were found in parents of infants with a CA one month after the disclosure of the diagnosis (e.g., Fonseca et al, 2012), studies suggest a gradual process of parental adjustment to the diagnosis (e.g., Lalor et al, 2009), which also may explain these results.…”

“…However, the absence of a multivariate gender effect underscores the similarity of the maternal and paternal experiences. In fact, such gender similarities were found in another study with parents of infants with a CA (Brosig et al, 2007) and support the idea that couples have a shared experience when facing stress-inducing events, such as raising an infant with a CA (Fonseca et al, 2012). One possible explanation is that, given the infant's additional caregiving requirements, fathers may recognize the need of becoming more involved in the caregiving role and support their partners.…”

“…A diagnosis of a CA can be a stress-inducing event for the family that only increases the stress created by the transition to parenthood (Fonseca et al, 2012). However, few studies have compared parental adjustment to the birth of an infant with a CA with the adjustment of parents of a healthy infant.…”

“…Caring for an infant with a CA in the early postpartum period may require extensive care and monitoring associated with the CA (Carnevale, Alexander, Davis, Rennick, & Troini, 2006;Mazer et al, 2008), in addition to the typical parental tasks. Therefore, when compared to parenting a healthy infant, raising an infant with a CA may be a more stressful experience (Messias et al, 1995) that impacts a parent's levels of psychological distress (Fonseca, Nazaré, & Canavarro, 2012) and may constrain the development of parental confidence (Freeman, 2006). This study aimed to compare parental adjustment (operationalized as psychological distress and confidence) in parents of infants with a CA and parents of healthy infants and to examine whether parental adjustment was influenced by attachment representations.…”