Abstract
There have been inconsistent findings from studies examining factors associated with quality of life (QoL) for children affected by parental illness. The aim of this study was to explore factors associated with self-reported QoL in children affected by parental illness or parental substance abuse. A cross-sectional multicentre study. The sample included 246 families with children 8-18years recruited via ill parents who received treatment for severe physical illness, mental illness or substance abuse in specialised health services. We performed multiple linear regression analyses to examine factors associated with the children's self-reported QoL. KIDSCREEN-27. The children's self-reported QoL was positively associated with the ill parent's self-reported physical health, the children's self-reported social skills, the degree to which other adults took over the ill parent's responsibilities, provision of sibling care, provision of health care for the ill parent and positive outcome of caregiving. The children's QoL was negatively associated with the children's self-reported responsibilities due to parental illness, provision of emotional care for the ill parent, negative outcomes of caregiving and external locus of control. The model explained 63% of the variance (adjusted R2 ) in children's total QoL. Sampling bias may have occurred during recruitment. The findings suggest factors of importance for the children's QoL. Clinicians should assess whether an ill parent's physical health may influence negatively on their ability to perform daily responsibilities at home and care for their children, and clinicians can use children's self-reported QoL to identify children who are most negatively affected.
Highlights
Assessing children’s quality of life may serve as an early indicator of psychosocial problems and indicate needs, and it may add significant information undetected by assessments of psychosocial adjustment [1,2,3,4,5]
There were positive associations with the children’s self-reported social skills, being a boy, experience of other adults taking over the responsibilities of the ill parent, provided health care for ill parent and experienced positive outcome of their caregiving at home and for the ill parent
The psychological well-being dimension had positive associations when children self-reported being a boy, experience of other adults taking over the responsibilities of the ill parent, provision of personal care and health for ill parent, and experienced positive outcome of caregiving
Summary
Assessing children’s quality of life may serve as an early indicator of psychosocial problems and indicate needs, and it may add significant information undetected by assessments of psychosocial adjustment [1,2,3,4,5]. The term ‘quality of life’ (QoL) used in this paper is defined as a multidimensional construct that covers children’s self-reported wellbeing in various dimensions such as physical well-being, psychological well-being, autonomy and parent relations, Pedersen and Revenson’s family ecology framework to guide research on parental illness, family functioning and. Research has shown that family role redistribution is the most common coping mechanism used by families experiencing parental illness [8,9,10,11] Important for these children’s well-being were their daily hassles, stress responses and their parents’ capacity of parenting [8]. There have been inconsistent findings from studies examining factors associated with quality of life (QoL) for children affected by parental illness. Clinicians should assess whether an ill parent’s physical health may influence negatively on their ability to perform daily responsibilities at home and care for their children, and clinicians can use children’s self-reported QoL to identify children who are most negatively affected
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