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To study the role of parental resilience, emotions accessed during admission and perceived stress in predicting the degree of parental posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression symptoms after a child's treatment in intensive care. This was prospective longitudinal cohort study. A total of 196 parents of pediatric intensive care survivors completed questionnaires assessing resilience, perceived stress, emotions experienced during admission, 48h post-discharge (T0). Sociodemographic and medical data were also collected. Main outcomes were anxiety, depression and PTSD, three (T1) and six (T2) months later. At T2, 23% of parents reported clinically significant levels of symptoms of PTSD, 21% reported moderate-severe anxiety, and 9% reported moderate-severe depression. These rates were not statistically different to rates at T1. Path analyses indicated that 47% of the variance in psychopathology symptoms at T2 could be predicted from the variables assessed at T0. Resilience was a strong negative predictor of psychopathology symptoms, but this effect was mostly indirect, mediated by the stress that parents perceive during their child's critical hospitalization. Mobilizing coping in order to maintain resilience and to decrease their perceived stress levels could improve parents' mental health outcomes following their child's intensive care treatment. •Having a child under intensive care treatment impairs parental mental health.•Parental rates of psychopathology did not decline over time, suggesting chronicity.•Resilience is a strong indirect protective factor for parental mental health.•The effect of resilience in parental mental health is mediated by perceived stress.•Interventions to prevent/reduce parental distress in the PICU should be implemented.

Background: The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) and its Short Form (PTGI-SF) are two instruments highly used in research on posttraumatic growth. They include a religious growth item that has been demonstrated to be problematic in cultures that are not very religious. Previous research has addressed this issue in other countries, but no attention has been paid to this critical problem in Spanish samples.Objective: Our aim is to address the psychometric issues presented by the religious growth item in Spain.Method: To do so, we reviewed several studies conducted with various populations in Spain.Results: The scores of the religious growth item in Spain present very low means and standard deviations, as well as high skewness and kurtosis, all of which point to a floor effect. The item scores show low item-test correlations, and it has failed to load on a specific dimension in factor analyses, thus casting doubts about its validity.Conclusions: The inventory does not seem to work properly in its current form in Spain. The inappropriateness of the item measuring religious growth in Spain may be due to cultural reasons. We recommend using the PTGI expanded version (PTGI-X) instead of the PTGI and exploring the possible substitution of the religious growth item in the PTGI-SF for an alternative item. In both cases, ascertaining the psychometric properties of the scores in Spain will be necessary.

This study evaluates the psychological impact (PI) of the COVID-19 pandemic in frontline workers in Spain. Participants were 546 workers (296 healthcare workers, 105 media professionals, 89 grocery workers, and 83 protective service workers). They all completed online questionnaires assessing PI, sadness, concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and demographic and work-related variables. All groups but protective services workers showed higher PI levels than the general population. Healthcare and grocery workers were the most affected, with 73.6% and 65.2% of the participants, respectively, showing a severe PI. Women showed a higher PI level. Healthcare workers in the regions with higher COVID-19 incidences reported greater PI levels. The main concerns were being infected by COVID-19 or infecting others. Levels of concern correlated with higher PI levels. The protection equipment was generally reported as insufficient, which correlated with higher PI levels. Professionals reporting to overwork during the crisis (60% mass-media, 38% of healthcare and grocery and 21.7% of protective service) showed higher PI levels. In the healthcare group, taking care of patients with COVID-19 (77%) or of dying patients with COVID-19 (43.9%) was associated with higher PI levels. The perceived social recognition of their work was inversely related to PI. Most of the sample had not received psychological support. We suggest some organizational measures for frontline institutions, such as the periodical monitoring or inclusion of psychologists specialized in crisis-management to prevent negative symptoms and provide timely support.

Writing and defending a thesis is a requirement to earn a university degree. Previous findings indicate that self-efficacy is related to academic performance. However, no existing tools register students’ perception of efficacy towards writing and defining academic texts. Our purpose was to develop and validate such a scale. Scale scores content, structural, convergent, and criterion-related validity as well as the measurement invariance across sex was evaluated using data from 418 students from 23 Spanish universities. Our findings showed that the scale holds a unidimensional structure that is invariant across sex. Data also supported the convergent validity, with correlations with self-efficacy and anxiety measures. The scale could track the effect of an educational intervention designed to improve students’ writing and defending academic texts skills, and the scores were related to performance on a writing task. Norms are provided to facilitate the interpretation of the scale scores.

People can experience posttraumatic growth (PTG) when faced with potentially traumatic events. One of the most widely-used instruments to measure PTG is the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-Short Form (PTGI-SF). However, it has not been validated for the Spanish population. This study explored the psychometric properties of the PTGI-SF in adults living in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since it is a global disaster, two items were added to assess communal PTG. The participants were adult inhabitants of Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic ( N  = 855). They completed the PTGI-SF in July 2020, along with the Impact of Event Scale – Revised to measure symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They also rated the degree to which they perceived the COVID-19 crisis as being severe. In November 2020, 592 participants once again completed the PTGI-SF. The factorial validity o was tested by Structural Equations Modeling (SEM). McDonald’s ω coefficients were calculated to test internal consistency. The Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC) was obtained to assess test–retest reliability. Sensitivity and criterion-related validity were assessed by exploring the association of the PTGI-SF scores with gender, age, PTSD symptoms, and perceived severity. Results indicated good psychometric properties for an eight-item, four-factor structure of the inventory in terms of structural validity, reliability, sensitivity and criterion-related validity. These factors were: Relating to Others, Personal Strength, Spiritual Change, and Life Value and Opportunities. Communal PTG overlapped with social PTG, and therefore it was not included. Cultural differences need to be addressed when measuring PTG, especially in terms of spiritual growth.

Research on parental psychological effects related to a child’s critical illness has focused on studying negative outcomes, while the possibility of posttraumatic growth (PTG), defined as the perception of positive changes after a traumatic event, has been overlooked. This study explores the degree of parental PTG after a child’s hospitalization in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and the role of resilience, emotions, perceived severity of the child’s condition and stress in predicting PTG. In the first 48 h after their child’s discharge from a PICU, N  = 196 parents were assessed for resilience, emotions, perceived stress, and the degree to which they perceived their child’s condition as severe. 6 months later N  = 143 parents were assessed PTG. 6 months post discharge, 37.1% of parents reported PTG at least to a medium degree. Path analyses with latent variables showed that the psychological variables assessed at discharge predicted between 20 and 21% of the total variance in PTG. Resilience affected PTG indirectly, through the bias of positive emotions. PTG is a frequent phenomenon. Psychological interventions aimed at encouraging parental PTG after a child’s critical admission should focus on boosting resilience and positive emotions.

Confronted with the potentially traumatic experience of a child’s admission to a paediatric intensive care unit, parents may experience psychopathological post-trauma symptoms as well as posttraumatic growth. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to explore the relation between psychopathology symptoms, namely, posttraumatic stress disorder), anxiety and depression, as well as post traumatic growth in parents following their child's hospitalisation in a paediatric intensive care unit. Six months after their child's discharge, 143 parents completed the questionnaire, which assessed post traumatic growth (Posttraumatic Growth Inventory), post traumatic stress disorder (Davidson Trauma Scale), depression and anxiety (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale). Of the 143 parents, 23.1% reported symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, 21% reported symptoms of moderate to severe anxiety, 9.1% reported symptoms of moderate to severe depression and 37.1% reported at least a medium degree of post traumatic growth. There was a moderate, direct association between post traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety with post traumatic growth. Higher scores in anxiety, depression and post traumatic stress disorder were associated with higher levels of post traumatic growth, contradicting the notion of an inverted U-shaped relationship between psychopathology symptoms and post traumatic growth. Given that positive and negative outcomes after a child's critical admission tend to co-occur, it is surmised that parents who indicate post traumatic growth do not deny the difficulties. While not negating the negative impact on the mental health of a parent with a child admitted to intensive care, including the assessment of post traumatic growth as an outcome following this event has important implications for research and clinical practice.

Background Chronic diseases in childhood can affect the physical and mental health of patients and their families. The literature on pediatric chronic diseases has found important associations between the sociodemographic variables of children and their caregivers and negative health consequences in families. Methods In this study, we aimed to design and validate a questionnaire on sociodemographic variables that would be useful for research on pediatric chronic diseases; and investigate the relationship between sociodemographic variables and psychosocial variables among family caregivers. First, we created a questionnaire that consists of 20 demographic, medical, and family-related items based on a literature review and expert evaluations. This questionnaire was then validated by 335 expert reviewers in the field of Social Work, who work daily with the families of patients with chronic diseases in 10 National Institutes of Health of Mexico. The validation was based on three empirical criteria created specifically for this study, and the reviewers evaluated the usefulness, relevance, and permanence of the items. In a second cross-sectional, correlational and comparative study, a total of 446 family caregivers of children with chronic diseases were interviewed, and they completed the Sociodemographic Variables Questionnaire for research on family caregivers of children with chronic sociodemographic diseases and four psychosocial measurement instruments for evaluating anxiety, depression, caregiver burden and quality of life. Results Based on the results of the first study, we created the Sociodemographic Variables Questionnaire (Q-SV) for research on family caregivers of children with chronic diseases, and it includes 17 items that assess demographic, medical, and family characteristics. The results of the second study showed that the 17 sociodemographic variables obtained in the validation by expert judges are useful for measuring and evaluating the relationship between psychosocial variables in families of children with chronic diseases. Conclusions Psychosocial and sociodemographic factors are relevant for the development of research processes for families that care for children with chronic diseases.

Although coping strategies are considered to contribute to resilience to adversity, their use is not stable, but varies depending on the specific adversity. However, to date, most of the questionnaires assessing coping do not consider its situational character. The objective of this study is to develop and validate the Situated Coping Questionnaire for Adults (SCQA), which assesses coping in the face of five different kinds of adverse contexts to take into account its situational dimension. A total of 430 Spanish adults (256 from the general population, 77 people suffering from cancer or HIV, and 97 parents of children with cancer or developmental problems) completed the SCQA and two resilience questionnaires (the Brief Resilience Scale and the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale) for validation purposes. Confirmatory factor analyses showed the superiority of the person-situation model; the situation influences the degree to which people use specific coping strategies; however, coping is also stable to some extent. Regression analyses showed that coping strategies contribute to predict resilience, supporting the validity of the SCQA. The questionnaire and its sub-scales showed adequate reliability. The SCQA is deemed a reliable and valid means of situated coping assessment for use in several populations.

This study explored how resilience can be predicted from coping styles (problem-focused, emotion-focused, and socially-focused) and personality characteristics (sense of mastery, sense of relatedness, and emotional reactivity). The sample consisted of 430 adults (256 general population, 77 VIH/cancer patients, and 97 parents of children with cancer or developmental problems). Several analyses were carried out: correlations to test discriminant validity; regression analyses to see whether resilience in different adverse situations is predicted by different coping and resiliency variables, and structural equations models and cross-validation analyses to compare two different predictive models (M1: from coping to resiliency, and from resiliency to resilience; M2: from resiliency to coping, and from coping to resilience). Results showed that coping factors as initial predictors and resilience factors as mediators (that is, M1), explained the greater variance in resilience scores. Besides, coping and personality factors predicted resilience differently depending on the type of adversity. Psychological interventions to boost resilience should focus on modifying the use of coping strategies, avoiding the utilization of the emotion-focused coping and social-focused coping, and promoting problem-focused coping.