Maternal caregiving strain as a mediator in the relationship between child and mother mental health problems.

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Maternal caregiving strain as a mediator in the relationship between child and mother mental health problems.

This study examined whether the general stress--caregiver strain--mental health outcome model may be as appropriate for caregivers of minor-age children as it has been for caregivers of adults with chronic illness. The authors examined whether children's behavioral problems are related to mothers' caregiving strains, which then is related to greater maternal mental health symptomatology. Mothers of 222 children referred for mental health services completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), Caregiver Strain Questionnaire (CGSQ), and three dependent variable measures: Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and the SF-36 Mental Health Scale. Path analyses and Sobel tests supported the tested model that maternal caregiving strain mediates between child mental health problems and three indicators of maternal mental health problems, with significant indirect pathways through maternal caregiving strain replacing the formerly significant direct contribution of child's problem severity to each maternal mental health measure.

Key words: burden; caregiving; children; mental health; women

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The strain on families dealing with an emotionally troubled child has received greater attention in recent years. In contrast to earlier psychiatric research that focused on the etiology of the child's problems, including parental pathology, more recent studies have examined the impact of child pathology on parental well-being. These studies delineated the array of difficulties experienced by parents of mentally ill children, especially by the mother (Marsh, 1996; Schene, Tessler, & Gamache, 1996). An overdue counterpoint to the more traditional psychiatric perspective, this revisionist view has emphasized the importance of understanding parenting stress related to children's problems and disabilities, has documented some of the difficulties experienced by parents, and has acknowledged the strong bidirectional influences in the parent-child dyad (Hammen, Burge, & Stansbury, 1990; McDonald, Poertner, & Pierpont, 1999).

Although this literature has increased in scope and sophistication, it has remained largely isolated from the broader body of research and theory relating to the burdens of caregivers (McDonald et al., 1999). The present study applies the conceptual and research lens of family caregiving to mothers caring for children with emotional problems. We examined a model of caregiving strain derived from Biegel, Sales, and Schulz (1991), which suggests that a mother's caregivi...

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