The role of perceived family social support and parental solicitous responses in adjustment to bothersome pain in young people with physical disabilities

Abstract

Purpose: Family social support and parental solicitous responses have been hypothesised to play an important role in paediatric pain. However, research testing the hypothesised associations between these social domains and measures of adjustment to pain in youths with disabilities and chronic pain is non-existent.

Methods: About 111 youths with physical disabilities and bothersome pain were interviewed and asked to complete measures of average pain intensity, pain interference, family social support, parent solicitous responding, and catastrophising.

Results: Children’s perceptions of pain-related solicitous responses from their parent/guardian were associated both with more pain interference and greater pain-related catastrophising; perceived social support was negatively associated with pain interference.

Conclusions: The findings provide new information regarding the role that psychosocial factors have in predicting function and adjustment, and have important implications as to how youth with physical disabilities with pain might be most effectively treated.

Implications for rehabilitation

• Little is known about the role of perceived family social support or parental solicitous responses in the adjustment to chronic pain in young people with physical disabilities.

• This study provides new and important findings that have significant theoretical and practical implications that could help to understand and manage function in these patients.

• Results show that it matters how parents respond to their children with disabilities who have pain, and raise the possibility that interventions which target these responses may result in significant benefits for the children.

Keywords:

• Chronic pain
• youths
• adjustment
• social support
• parents solicitous responses

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no financial or other relationships that might lead to a conflict of interest related to this study.

Funding

Support for the study upon which the findings reported here are based was provided by Grant P01 HD033988 from the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health. JM’s work is supported by Fundación Española del Dolor, the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA-Acadèmia), Fundación Grünenthal, and from grants provided from Obra Social de Caixabank, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (PFR program), RecerCaixa, the Spanish Ministry of Innovation (MINECO; PSI2015–70966-P; PSI2016–82004-REDT), the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and the Fundació La Marató de TV3. RV’s work is supported by a Beatriu de Pinós Postdoctoral Fellowship (2014 BP-A 00009) granted by the Agency for Administration of University and Research Grants (AGAUR).