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Determinants and consequences of children's coping in the medical setting: conceptualization, review, and critique
K D Rudolph1, M D Dennig, J R Weisz
1Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
Insights
Understanding how children manage painful medical experiences is crucial. This review examines coping strategies, moderators, and mediators, advocating for multidisciplinary and transactional models in pediatric pain research.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Psychology
- Medical Sociology
- Developmental Psychology
Background:
- Growing body of research on children's coping with medical pain.
- Existing typologies of coping and their impact on child adjustment.
- Need for deeper understanding of factors influencing coping effectiveness.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review current knowledge on child coping with painful medical stressors.
- To identify moderators and mediators in the stress-coping-adjustment process.
- To propose advancements in conceptualizing and studying pediatric pain coping.
Main Methods:
- Examination of prominent coping typologies in child research.
- Analysis of empirical studies on child adjustment and outcomes related to coping.
- Focus on moderators (child/environmental factors) and mediators (mechanisms).
Main Results:
- Identified gaps in understanding moderators and mediators of coping.
- Highlighted the need to differentiate coping responses, goals, and outcomes.
- Emphasized limitations of simplistic coping models.
Conclusions:
- Multidisciplinary frameworks are essential for studying pediatric pain and coping.
- Clearer distinctions between coping responses, goals, and outcomes are needed.
- Transactional and goodness-of-fit models offer more nuanced approaches to understanding child coping.
Abstract:
The recent burgeoning of theory and research on how children cope with painful medical stressors warrants close scrutiny. The authors examine the prominent typologies of coping and the research on child adjustment and outcomes stimulated by those typologies. They focus on what researchers know and need to know about moderators (characteristics of the child and the environment that influence coping and outcome) and mediators (mechanisms linking stress, coping, and adjustment). It is argued that important advances can be achieved through efforts to (a) conceptualize and study pain and coping within a multidisciplinary framework; (b) clearly distinguish among coping responses, goals, and outcomes; and (c) replace simplistic conceptualizations with transactional and goodness-of-fit models.