title: [Levels of state-trait anxiety between mothers and fathers who have children in an intensive care unit.]
abstract: Background: when there is a child patient in the family, it is frequent that parents get upset. Anxiety in the mother and father could be different depending on the way each one lives the critical situation of the child patient. The purpose was to measure levels of anxiety in fathers and mothers who had a hospitalized child in an intensive care unit. Methods: the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) was applied to a group of 50 pairs of parents who had a hospitalized child in the intensive care unit in a pediatric hospital. A no probabilistic intentional sample was used. Differences between groups were analyzed by Student's t test. Results: no significant differences were obtained between mothers and fathers for both state-anxiety and trait-anxiety. Significant differences were obtained intra-groups between both kinds of anxiety. Conclusions: having a child who is chronically sick or hospitalized for intensive therapy causes similar levels of anxiety in both parents. Anxiety is significantly increased in both parents when their child is hospitalized in an intensive therapy unit.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Salud Mental, Hospital de Pediatría, Centro Médico Nacional Siglo XXI. Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, Distrito Federal, México. karmina_rojas@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Karmina Elena
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Rojas-Carrasco
keywords: ansiedad; ansiedad rasgo-estado; anxiety; hospitalized children; niños hospitalizados; state-trait anxiety