Mental Health, Parental Burnout, and Family Functioning of Caregivers and Non-Caregivers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Solicited Content: COVID-19 Related

Abstract

Parents of children with special health care needs (CSHCN) experience high levels of attention, time, and daily demands, which may lead to poor mental and physical health outcomes (Drummond et al., 2011; Smith & Gzywacz, 2014). Parental outcomes may differ based on the CSHCN condition type due to disparities in access to care, financial, and time burdens (Kogan et al., 2008). During the COVID-19 pandemic, parents are experiencing elevated stressors that impact their mental health (Brown et al., 2020), yet little is known about how COVID-19 impacts parents with CSHCN. This study aims to: 1) explore differences in mental health and family functioning between parents with CSHCN and parents without CSHCN parents during COVID-19 and 2) investigate whether the outcomes differ across CSHCN condition types.

Data were collected in April 2020 from 1,009 parents (88.8% women, 81.9% white, 83.25% non-CSHCN) of children 0-12 years old (M=2.1 children). Of parents with CSHCN (n=169), 33.7% had a child with intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) only, 26% with emotional and mental health problems (EMH) only, and 40.2% with other or multiple conditions. Depression, anxiety, COVID-19 specific psychological impacts (i.e., I am depressed because of COVID-19, the COVID-19 outbreak has impacted my psychological health negatively, the COVID-19 pandemic has not made me feel any worse than I did before), parental burnout, and overall family functioning were measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (Kroenke et al., 2009), General Anxiety Scale-7 (Spitzer et al., 2006), the Coronavirus Impacts Questionnaire (Conway et al., 2020), Parental Burnout Assessment (Roskam et al. 2018), and the General Functioning subscale of the McMaster Family Assessment Device (Epstein et al., 1983), respectively.

Correlations revealed that being a parent of CSHCN was positively associated with higher depression (r=.13, p<.001), anxiety (r=.09, p=.004), and parental burnout scores (r=.12, p<.001), however it was not associated with COVID-19 specific psychological impacts. A negative correlation emerged between overall CSHCN status and reported family functioning (r=-.11, p=.001). One-way ANOVA results (see Table 1) revealed significant mean differences by CSHCN type for parental burnout (F (2,166) =4.147, p=.017) and COVID-19 psychological impacts (F (2, 166) =6.751, p=.002). A post-hoc Tukey test indicated that the parents of children with EMH conditions reported significantly higher burnout scores compared to parents of children with other/multiple conditions (p=.013). Furthermore, the EMH group and the IDD group had significantly higher COVID-19 psychological impact scores compared to the other/multiple conditions’ group (p=.046; p=.002).

These results suggest that while parents of CSHCN reported worse mental health and family functioning than other parents, their experiences of the added mental health burden of the COVID-19 pandemic were similar. However, parents’ experiences differed depending on their child’s health condition type, which may be due to differences in caregiving demands and support services. Overall, this study highlights the need to offer increased support to parents of CSHCN.

Authors

• Nadia Al Nassar, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Kristin Litzelman, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Margaret L. Kerr, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Non-Presenting Author