PARENTING STRESS IN MOTHERS OF INFANTS WITH CONGENITAL HEART DISEASE AND OF PRETERM INFANTS AT ONE YEAR OF AGE

Objective: It is known that parenting a child born with congenital heart disease (CHD) is more challenging than parenting a healthy newborn. Moreover, parental stress may lead to behavioural difficulties in the child with CHD. The aim of this study is to evaluate potential differences in the levels of stress perceived by mothers of infants at one year of age either affected by a congenital heart disease (CHD) or preterm with favorable clinical and developmental outcome (group of mothers of healthy babies at birth is recruited as control). Furthermore we investigated in each group the potential association between mothers' stress, neonatal risk factors and maternal socio-demographic factors. Method: 40 infants born with CHD and 34 preterm born were recruited. The control group was constituted by 26 healthy and born at term infants coming from two child care units. All children were evaluated by Bayley III Scales, the maternal parenting stress was assessed in the infants' mothers by Parenting Stress Index - Short Form. Results: The ANOVA test revealed significant differences among the groups for Parent-Child Dysfunctional Interaction (F= 3.95, df= 2. 99, p=0. 02). Post hoc tests evidenced that mothers of preterm infants reported significantly higher scores on PCDI (mean= 19.15, SD= 5.9) compared with the other two groups (respectively mothers of infants with CHD at birth, mean= 16.5, SD= 4.3 and healthy infants mothers mean= 16.12, SD= 3). Data evidenced an inverse correlation between the educational level of mothers of infants with CHD and PSI-PD scale (r= -.36, p< 0.001), a higher maternal educational qualification is related to lower level of stress as reported by the mothers themselves. Conclusions: Results confirm that significant differences in parental stress were detected between the two clinical groups. The results of this research will show to the clinicians the aspects of parental stress to be addressed in parents of children with a risk condition at birth.