ABSTRACT
Objective:To explore the latent classes of emotional behavior of children with mental disorders, and their relationship with parents' sense of parenting competence and psychological distress.Methods:A survey of 327 parents of children with mental disorders was conducted from September to December 2022 using the general information questionnaire, the sense of parenting competence scale, the Kessler psychological distress scale, and the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (parent version). Mplus 8.0 and SPSS 25.0 softwares were used for statistical analysis.The latent class analysis was used to identify subgroups of children with mental disorders based on their emotional behavior.Multinomial logistic regression was used to analyze the related factors.Results:Latent class analysis showed that the emotional behaviors of children with mental disorders were divided into 3 categories: emotion-conduct problem prominent group (38.53%(126/327)), simple emotional problem group (44.65%(146/327)), and emotion-peer interaction significant group (16.82%(55/327)). The differences among the 3 latent classes were statistically significant (all P<0.05) in terms of parents' parenting competence, satisfaction, and psychological distress scores.Compared with the emotion-conduct problem prominent group, the higher the parental parenting knowledge and parenting competence, the emotional behavior of children with mental disorders tended to be in the simple emotional problem group ( B=0.699, OR=2.011, 95% CI=1.046-3.868; B=0.088, OR=1.092, 95% CI=1.017-1.173). Compared with the " emotion-conduct problem prominent group" , the emotional behavior of children with mental disorders aged 13 to 18 years old tended to be in the " emotion-peer interaction significant group" ( B=1.982, OR=7.255, 95% CI=1.637-32.141). Conclusion:The emotional behavior of children with mental disorders is heterogeneous, and there are differences in sense of parenting competence and psychological distress of parents among different latent classes of children with mental disorders.