- Poster presentation
- Open Access
- Published:
A biopsychosocial approach to parents of children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis
Pediatric Rheumatology volume 9, Article number: P115 (2011)
Background
The burden of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) in affected families has not been studied in Greece.
Primary Objectives
The unraveling of the biopsychosocial consequences in these parents regarding anxiety and/or depression, the ways of their coping (WOC) to stressful stimuli and their adherence to physicians’ and physiotherapists’ instructions.
Secondary Objectives
The correlation of these consequences with the disease activity marker (MDVAS), the CHAQ and pain (VAS).
Materials and methods
76 parents of 69 JIA children (56 mothers: 20 fathers, 14/76 in couples, mean age 39.9 and 42.8 years respectively) were assessed using specific and validated in the Greek population tools. These tools score the anxiety (Spielberger), the depression (Beck), the WOC (Lazarus & Folkman) and the adherence to the health professionals’ instructions.
Results
The mothers demonstrated high scores regarding anxiety, either as a state (p=0.0001) or a trait (p=0.01) and symptoms of mild depression (10.28±7.60). As of the WOC, the fathers demonstrated lower scores in emphasizing the positive (p=0.004), whereas both parents demonstrated high scores of confrontable coping (p=0.0006 and p=0.02). Parents had a very satisfactory adherence to health professionals’ instructions and a concordance was observed within the couple. No significant correlation was detected between the biopsychosocial consequences and the parents’ assessment of JIA activity and outcome.
In conclusion
The biopsychosocial consequences of parenting a child with JIA are mild regarding anxiety and depression; the parents are demanding and adhere to health professionals’ instructions. However, these consequences do not correlate with the markers of the JIA course and outcome.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
M Trachana, P Pratsidou-Gertsi contributed equally to this work.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
About this article
Cite this article
Georgiadou, Z., Trachana, M., Pratsidou-Gertsi, P. et al. A biopsychosocial approach to parents of children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Pediatr Rheumatol 9 (Suppl 1), P115 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1186/1546-0096-9-S1-P115
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1546-0096-9-S1-P115
Keywords
- Public Health
- Arthritis
- Health Professional
- Lower Score
- Primary Objective