Parent physical and mental health contributions to interpersonal fear avoidance processes in pediatric chronic pain

Theoretical models and evidence increasingly identify chronic pain as a family issue. To date, much of this work has focused on risk conferred by parental chronic pain status despite evidence suggesting parent mental illness and non-pain-related chronic illness may also contribute to poorer chronic pain outcomes in children. This study is the first to test interpersonal fear avoidance processes as possible mechanisms through which parent health (mental and physical) influences pediatric chronic pain functioning. We used structural equation models to test such an integrative model using cross-sectional data from a large clinical registry of 448 dyads of patients aged between 8 and 18 years (M = 14.57 years; SD = 2.38; 327 females) with mixed chronic pain and their parents (403 mothers). As expected, poorer parent global health was indirectly related to greater child pain interference through higher parent pain catastrophizing, and then through greater parent protective behaviors and child pain catastrophizing. The model demonstrated excellent fit to the data (χ[5] = 5.04, ns; χ/df = 1.01; comparative fit index = 1.00, root mean square error of approximation = 0.004 [90% confidence interval = 0.000 to 0.066]). Exploratory multiple-group comparison structural equation model revealed moderation of specific model paths based on child age group (8- to 12-year-olds vs 13- to 18-year-olds) and parent pain status (present vs absent). This study integrates family models of pain with the interpersonal fear avoidance model to extend our mechanistic understanding of parental physical and mental health contributors to pediatric chronic pain.