Emma Fisher1, Rachel V. Aaron1, Megan Lounds1, Tonya M. Palermo1
1) United States
Background and aims. Parents of children with chronic pain report higher levels of protective behaviors compared to parents of healthy children, which are associated with increased pain and disability in adolescents with chronic pain. However, protective behaviors have primarily been assessed with self-report measures with limited ability to understand the how dyadic interactions may contribute to protective behaviors. We aimed to assess parent protective behaviors in adolescents with and without chronic pain by experimentally inducing discomfort through exercise and frustration through a challenging problem-solving task.
Methods: 30 adolescents with chronic pain and 30 adolescents without chronic pain and their parents are currently being enrolled. Dyads complete questionnaires on pain and anxiety, and participate in a 30-minute lab visit that includes tasks intended to elicit frustration and possible help seeking. The sit-up task involves completing a full sit-up every 7 seconds for 5 minutes whilst their parent supervises and the problem-solving task involves completing as many challenging visual spatial puzzles (tangrams) as possible in 5 minutes with the parent watching. Both tasks are videotaped and dyadic interactions will be coded to assess parental interference.
Results: To date, 20 participants have completed the study (Mage=16.0, SD=1.15). Our planned analyses include multivariate ANOVAs to compare differences between adolescents with and without pain on parent behaviors including encouraging continuing/stopping, distracting, attending, and directing (sit-up task) and the time until solicited or unsolicited help (tangram task). Hierarchical linear regressions will be used to assess whether parent and child anxiety predict protective behaviors.
Conclusions: This study will provide preliminary data on the feasibility of eliciting parent protective behaviors through experimental tasks and determining differences in parents of adolescents with versus without chronic pain. Findings will inform future research investigating the role of child and parent anxiety in influencing parent-adolescent interactions and protective behaviors.
