• Soeun Lee, McMurtryC MeghanCMDepartment of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph.Pediatric Chronic Pain Program, McMaster Children's Hospital, Hamilton.Children's Health Research Institute and Department of Paediatrics, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, , Caroline Summers, Kim Edwards, Nezihe Elik, and Margaret N Lumley.
• Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph.
• Clin J Pain. 2020 Jun 1; 36 (6): 440-448.

ObjectivesPediatric chronic pain has often been examined from a risk perspective, and relatively less is known about the individual and family-level resilience factors that help youth with chronic pain maintain their quality of life (QOL). This cross-sectional study: (1) examined the relations among purported youth and parent resilience (youth pain acceptance and pain self-efficacy, parent psychological flexibility) and risk (youth pain intensity and parent protectiveness) factors with youth QOL, and (2) tested exploratory statistical mechanisms that may explain relations between parent and youth variables.MethodsParticipants included 122 youth (10 to 17 y; M=14.26, SD=2.19) seen in an interdisciplinary pediatric chronic pain program and a parent. Youth completed measures of their average pain, QOL, pain acceptance, and pain self-efficacy. Parents completed measures of their pain-related psychological flexibility and behavioral responses to pain (ie, protectiveness, distraction, monitoring, minimizing).ResultsYouth pain acceptance, pain self-efficacy, and parent psychological flexibility were highly positively correlated with each other, and with overall youth QOL. Evidence for a buffering effect of pain acceptance and pain self-efficacy on the association between pain intensity and QOL was not found. Protectiveness was found to be a significant mediator of the relation between parental psychological flexibility and youth QOL.DiscussionThe results are discussed in the context of the resilience-risk framework and current understandings of the role of parental factors for pediatric chronic pain.

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