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.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: While parents who foster children with epilepsy would have considerable parenting difficulties, the parenting stress and sense of competence have not been investigated. We investigated maternal parenting stress, parenting satisfaction and sense of parenting competence in children with seizure disorders, and the associations with seizure-related variables. METHODS: Mothers of 79 children with seizure disorders (41 boys, 38 girls; mean age, 9.9+/-2.3 years) and 79 healthy comparison subjects matched for age and sex were recruited for this study. The Korean version of the Parenting Stress Index (K-PSI-SF) and the Parenting Sense of Competence (K-PSOC) were used to assess parenting stress, parenting satisfaction and parenting efficacy. RESULTS: Mothers of children with seizure disorders showed higher scores on stress related to difficult child and child learning and parenting anxiety compared to mothers of healthy children. In addition, scores on stress related to parental-child interaction and child learning were significantly associated with parental economic status. Scores on stress from parental-child interaction was also correlated with seizure severity, and stress from child learning was correlated with seizure type. Sense of parenting competence and anxiety scores were correlated with paternal educational status, respectively. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that mothers of children with epilepsy have greater parenting stress and anxiety and social and seizure-associated factors may affect the parenting stress and anxiety.