title: Adolescent chronic pain: patterns and predictors of emotional distress in adolescents with chronic pain and their parents.
abstract: Adolescents with chronic pain also report severe disability and emotional distress. A clinical sample of 80 adolescents and accompanying parents were investigated to first measure the extent of distress, and second to investigate the relationships between adolescent distress, parental distress and adolescent coping. Measures of pain intensity, anxiety, depression, disability and coping were obtained from adolescents. Parents completed measures including their own anxiety, depression and parenting stress. Overall, adolescents reported high levels of disability, depression and anxiety, and parents reported high levels of depression, anxiety and parenting stress. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the best predictors of adolescent emotional distress were the extent to which the adolescents catastrophize and seek social support to cope with the pain. There were no clear predictors of parental anxiety or depression but the specific pattern of parenting stress was best predicted by the younger age of the adolescent, the greater the chronicity of the problem, and the greater the extent of adolescent depression. These findings suggest that emotional coping is a critical variable in the distress associated with adolescent chronic pain. It is argued that adolescent emotional coping may best be understood within a relational context of seeking emotional support.
authors.affiliation: Pain Management Unit, University of Bath, Level 7, Wessex House, Bath BA2 7AY, UK Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, NHS Trust, Bath, UK Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Eccleston
authors.forename: Geert
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Crombez
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Scotford
authors.forename: Jacqui
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Clinch
authors.forename: Hannah
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Connell
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D001007:Anxiety / Q000209:etiology*; D002648:Child; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D003863:Depression / Q000209:etiology*; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010146:Pain / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*; D010147:Pain Measurement; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010290:Parents; D010552:Personality Assessment; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012044:Regression Analysis