The predictive factors for the posttraumatic growth of parents of burn children: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Burns not only cause physical and mental trauma to children but also constitute a traumatic event for their parents, who may exhibit positive psychological changes related to growth. This study aims to confirm the level of posttraumatic growth(PTG) among parents of burn children and explore the predictive effects of the children’s disease characteristics, parents’ rumination, self-disclosure, and social support on their PTG. METHODS: Convenience sampling was used to select 132 parents of burn children who were hospitalized in four tertiary A hospitals in Hunan Province from June 2022 to December 2022 as research subjects. The self-designed questionnaire on the general information of burn children and their parents, Chinese-Posttraumatic Growth Inventory(C-PTGI), Chinese Event Related Rumination Inventory(C-ERRI), Distress Disclosure Index(DDI), and Social Support Rating Scale(SSRS) were used to investigate and analyze the PTG status and influencing factors of parents of burn children. SPSS22.0 software was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: The total score of PTG of parents of burn children was (58.87 ± 15.74). The PTG of parents of burn children was significantly positively correlated with deliberate rumination, self-disclosure, social support, and not significantly correlated with intrusive rumination. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that social support, rumination, self-disclosure, and surgical treatment are the independent predictors of PTG, which explained 25.3% of the variance of PTG level of parents of burn children. CONCLUSION: During hospitalization of burn children, their parents will experience a certain degree of PTG, which is close to a medium level and needs to be further improved. Rumination, self-disclosure, social support, and surgical treatment were important predictors of PTG.