title: Do parents maintain or exacerbate pediatric functional abdominal pain? A systematic review and meta-analysis.
abstract: Parents may maintain or exacerbate functional abdominal pain (FAP) in children through modeling of physical symptoms and solicitous responses to the child's complaints. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to examine these relationships. Parents of children with FAP reported more physical symptoms than parents of healthy children (effect size d = .36). As all studies were cross-sectional or retrospective, the causal direction was unclear. For parental responses to child complaints, not enough studies were available to perform a meta-analysis. We conclude that the present literature is unfit to establish whether parents maintain or exacerbate pediatric FAP through the processes investigated.
authors.affiliation: Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. s.m.vanderveek@amc.uva.nl
authors.forename: Shelley M C
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Van Der Veek
authors.forename: H H F
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Derkx
authors.forename: Else
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: De Haan
authors.forename: Marc A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Benninga
authors.forename: Rachel D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Plak
authors.forename: Frits
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Boer
mesh_terms: D015746:Abdominal Pain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D011602:Psychophysiologic Disorders