Relationship of Parental Psychological Distress to Consequences of Chronic Health Conditions in Children

Objective: To assess whether parents' self-reported psychologicaldistress was related to consequences of chronic health conditionsin their children as reflected by three domains: functionallimitations, reliance on compensatory mechanisms, and serviceuse above routine care. Methods: We used telephone survey data on children's healthand parents' psychiatric symptoms from an inner-city communitysample (n = 380) and a population-based national sample (n =398). Results: In the national sample, parents of children with functionallimitations were more distressed than parents whose childrenexperienced other types of condition consequences or none. Inthe inner-city sample, presence of a health condition was associatedwith greater parental distress, but there were no significanteffects by consequence type. Conclusions: Research needs to determine if parents of childrenwith functional limitations represent a high-risk group andto identify the factors associated with their elevated distress.