Initial Challenges of Caregiving During COVID-19: Caregiver Burden, Mental Health, and the Parent-Child Relationship.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Russell, B. S. Hutchison, M. Tambling, R. Tomkunas, A. J. Horton, A. L.
Abstract	Research confirms that the mental health burdens following community-wide disasters are extensive, with pervasive impacts noted in individuals and families. It is clear that child disaster outcomes are worst among children of highly distressed caregivers, or those caregivers who experience their own negative mental health outcomes from the disaster. The current study used path analysis to examine concurrent patterns of parents’ (n = 420) experience from a national sample during the early months of the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic. The results of a multi-group path analysis, organized by parent gender, indicate good fit to the data [X2(10) = 159.04, p < .01]. Results indicate significant linkages between parents’ caregiver burden, mental health, and perceptions of children’s stress; these in turn are significantly linked to child-parent closeness and conflict, indicating possible spillover effects for depressed parents and compensatory effects for anxious parents. The impact of millions of families sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic for an undefined period of time may lead to unprecedented impacts on individuals’ mental health with unknown impacts on child-parent relationships. These impacts may be heightened for families whose caregivers experience increased mental health symptoms, as was the case for fathers in the current sample.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC7398861&blobtype=pdf
ISSN	0009398X
Journal	Child Psychiatry and Human Development [Child Psychiatry Hum Dev]
Volume Number	51
DOI	10.1007/s10578-020-01037-x
PubMed Central reference number	PMC7398861
Issue Number	5
PubMed reference number	32749568
e-ISSN	15733327
Language	English
Publisher	Springer US
Publisher Date	2020-10-01
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Subject Keyword	Caregiver burden Depression Anxiety Parent–child relationship COVID-19
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Developmental and Educational Psychology Psychiatry and Mental Health Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health