Parental stress and psychopathological traits in children and adolescents. A controlled study - [Stress genitoriale e psicopatologia in età evolutiva. Uno studio caso-controllo]

AIM: Since parental stress and family empowerment were shown to influence children's and adolescents' outcome, especially in the case of psychotherapeutic treatments, the present study aims to deeply explore factors that are likely to impact on stress and empowerment in parents of children with a psychiatric diagnosis. METHODS: Parenting stress and empowerment have been compared between 45 parents of children with a psychiatric disorder and 96 parents of children without psychiatric disorders. RESULTS: Parenting stress appeared to be higher in patients' parents and it varied according to disorder severity, while socio-demographic variables seemed to influence the stress levels only to a slight extent. Moreover parental stress and empowerment influenced each other within the parental couple. CONCLUSIONS: Developing interventions aimed to support parenting and to involve fathers in the parent-child relationship, focused on increasing parents empowerment and self-efficacy, could contribute to decrease stress and positively influence children's psychopathology.