PTSD Symptoms, Emotion Regulation, and Parenting in Parents of Children with Canc

父母的心理和情绪痛苦随时可能扰乱他们的养育方式，但儿科癌症的诊断和治疗是主要压力来源的例子，可能会对作为父母的能力构成特别重大的挑战。父母面临着在诊断和治疗期间向孩子提供信息和情感支持的挑战，但他们自己高度的心理和情感痛苦可能会干扰他们这样做的能力。研究表明，儿童癌症患者的父母比其他类型的痛苦更有可能经历创伤后应激症状。这些父母的创伤后应激障碍症状可能会干扰他们为孩子提供的信息和情感支持，父母的情绪调节策略可能决定创伤后应激障碍症状最终对父母行为的影响。这项拟议的研究将考察父母的创伤后应激症状和情绪调节策略与与孩子谈论癌症期间提供的温暖和结构的数量之间的关系。这项拟议的研究是为了服务于一个长期目标，即扩大目前关于父母自身的心理和情感痛苦如何影响他们的育儿行为的研究。此外，这项拟议的研究旨在确定情绪调节策略，这些策略可能在解释心理痛苦和父母养育之间的关系方面可能是重要的，以阐明为什么父母的痛苦干扰了父母的养育，以及旨在改善父母养育的干预措施可以针对父母。这项建议将重点放在癌症儿童的父母身上，他们是一个暴露在主要的、显著的压力源下并在痛苦程度上存在差异的群体。通过直接观察、半结构化访谈和问卷调查，该项目将评估100名被诊断为癌症儿童的父母的创伤后应激症状、情绪调节、元情绪哲学和育儿方式。将检验创伤后应激障碍症状、情绪调节、元情绪哲学和父母教养之间的关系模型。

Parents' psychological and emotional distress can disrupt their parenting at any time, but the diagnosis and treatment of pediatric cancer are examples of major stressors that can present particularly significant challenges to the ability to function as a parent. Parents are challenged to provide information and emotional support to their child during their diagnosis and treatment, but high levels of their own psychological and emotional distress may interfere with their ability to do so. Research has shown that parents of pediatric cancer patients are more likely to experience posttraumatic stress symptoms than other kinds of distress. PTSD symptoms in these parents may interfere with the information and emotional support they provide for their child, and parents' emotion regulation strategies may determine the effect that PTSD symptoms ultimately have on parents' behavior. The proposed research will examine how parents' posttraumatic stress symptoms and emotion regulation strategies are related to the amount of warmth and structure provided during a conversation with their child about cancer. This proposed research is in service to a long-term goal of expanding current research on how parents' own psychological and emotional distress affects their parenting behavior. Further, the proposed research aims to identify emotion regulation strategies that may be important in accounting for the relation between psychological distress and parenting in order to illuminate why parents' distress interferes with parenting and what interventions aimed at improving parenting can target in parents. This proposal focuses on parents of children with cancer as a group that is exposed to major, salient stressors and has variability in distress levels. Using direct observations, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires, the proposed project will assess posttraumatic stress symptoms, emotion regulation, meta-emotion philosophy and parenting in 100 parents of children diagnosed with cancer. A model of the relations among PTSD symptoms, emotion regulation, meta-emotion philosophy and parenting will be tested.