Family matters: parental-acquired brain injury and child functioning

To relate illness related to and family factors to emotional and behavioural problems in school-age children (7-14 years old) of parents with acquired brain injury and their healthy spouses.

Members of 35 families in which a parent had been diagnosed with acquired brain injury participated. Family and brain injury characteristics were reported by the ill and healthy parents. Children self-reported post-traumatic stress symptoms (PSS) using the Child Impact of Events revised (CRIES). Emotional and behavioural problems among the children were also identified by the parents using the Achenbach's Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL).

The family stress variables relating to the healthy spouse in all six comparisons were significant (p <= 0.05) or nearly so (p = 0.07) in each case showing higher scores for spouses to be associated with higher CRIES and CBCL total scores for the children. For the adjusted associations, we again found the family stress variables in the healthy spouse to be related to the risk of emotional and behavioral problems in the children.

The present results suggest that in ABI families, the children's emotional functioning depends upon family factors and primarily on the level of parental stress in the healthy parent.