Mothers' emotional suppression is associated with children's acute pain reactivity in a pediatric chronic pain sample

Abstract

Emotional suppression, a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy, has recently been linked to greater acute pain responsivity in children. Because existing research has not examined the association between mothers' emotional suppression and children's experimental pain responses, the present study tested this relationship in 36 children with chronic pain (mean age = 14.6 years; 22 girls) and their mothers. Mothers completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) to assess emotional suppression. Children completed a series of laboratory pain tasks including the cold pressor task (CPT), an evoked pressure task (EP), and a pressure tolerance task (PT). For each task, children's pain intensity and anticipatory anxiety were assessed using an 11 point Numeric Rating Scale (NRS); pain tolerance (in seconds) was recorded for the CPT and the PT. Sequential multiple linear regression analyses indicated that after controlling for child age and sex, mother suppression was associated with children's anticipatory anxiety for the EP and the CPT, as well as children's pain intensity for the PT, uniquely accounting for between 7- 16% of the variance in children's pain responses (overall adjusted model R2's = 16% - 52% of variance explained, p's < .05). Tolerance data for the CPT and PT were bimodally distributed and thus responses were grouped into high vs. low tolerance. Sequential logistic regression controlling for child age/sex indicated that mother suppression predicted CPT group membership (B = -.26, p < .05; Odds Ratio = .77, 95% CI = .60 – 1.0). Greater mother suppression was associated with a .77 unit increase in the likelihood of the child being in the low CPT tolerance group. These results indicate that mother emotional suppression is linked with heightened acute pain responses in children with chronic pain. Future work may test whether interventions addressing mother emotional suppression are beneficial in ameliorating pediatric chronic pain.