Problem Solving Skills Training For Parent Caregivers of Youth With Chronic Pain

Chronic pain affects 25-40% of children and adolescents, and results in significantly lower quality of life for these youth. Parents play an important role in how their children cope with chronic pain, and can also experience their own distress related to their child's illness. Parental psychological distress is widely recognized to be associated with poorer child adjustment. However, no interventions have been developed specifically to treat psychological distress in parents of children with chronic pain. Problem-solving skills training (PSST) has been shown to result in significant reductions in parental distress among caregivers of children with other types of chronic illness such as cancer. The purpose of this study is to test the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of PSST for parents of youth with chronic pain.