The correlation of post-traumatic stress disorder and emotional regulation of parents with children having acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Abstract

Objective To explore the correlation between post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and emotional regulation in the parents whose children have acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) . Methods By convenient sampling method, a total of 233 parents whose children had ALL were selected in the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University from June 2013 to June 2017, and the levels of PTSD and emotional regulation were evaluated by The PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C) and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) . A total of 233 questionnaires were distributed and 233 valid ones were retrieved, yielding an effective recovery rate of 100%. Results In this study, the participants got (35.82±4.93) points for PCL-C, among which the highest average item score was (2.29±0.36) points for Avoid/Numb; the score of and were (4.27±0.64) and (4.35±0.60) points in ERQ. Pearson correlation analysis showed that the total score and each dimension score in PCL-C were negatively correlated with cognitive reappraisal (P<0.05) , and were positively correlated with expressive suppression (P<0.05) . Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression were the influencing factors for PTSD of the parents with ALL children (P<0.05) . Conclusions ALL children's parents have serious PTSD and tend to choose the emotional regulation way of expressive suppression. There is correlation between the degree of PTSD in ALL children's parents and their emotional regulating ability, therefore, nursing staff should assist them in the improvement of their emotional regulation ability to reduce the level of PTSD. Key words: Leukemia; Acute lymphoblastic leukemia; Post-traumatic stress disorder; Emotional regulation