ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Epilepsy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1575628
This article is part of the Research TopicPediatric Epilepsy in the Screen SocietyView all articles
Severity, uncertainty, social support and coping style of parents who have children with epilepsy: a structural equation model
Provisionally accepted
- 1Xi'an Medical University, Xi'an, China
- 2Xi’an Children’s Hospital, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, China
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Aim: To examine four variables in the model of perceived uncertainty in illness in northwestern China; to explore the relationship between severity, social support, illness uncertainty, and active coping in parents of children with epilepsy. Design: A cross-sectional study design.Reporting Method: The STROBE checklist was used to ensure the rigor in this study.Method: This study recruits parents of children with epilepsy from a tertiary children's hospital using convenience sampling between January and November 2024. Eligible participants completed questionnaires via an online platform (https://www.wjx.cn/) by scanning the QR code. Structural equation modeling and mediated effects serve as the methods for data analysis.Result: This study surveyed 492 parents, including 192 males (39.0%) and 300 females (61.0%). The corrected model achieved an acceptable model fit: χ2 = 89.104 (p < 0.001); df = 59; χ2/df = 1.510; RMSEA = 0.043; CFI = 0.960; TLI = 0.941; IFI = 0.969). Severity positively predicted illness uncertainty (β = 0.105, p < 0.05). Social support negatively predicted illness uncertainty (β = -0.111, p < 0.05) and positively predicted active coping (β = 0.583, p < 0.001). Illness uncertainty negatively predicted active coping (β = -0.075, p < 0.05). Social support had a direct positive effect on active coping (β = 0.550, p < 0.01), and social support had an indirect negative effect on active coping through uncertainty (β = -0.012, p < 0.001).Conclusion: Illness uncertainty partially mediated the relationship between social support and active coping. However, we did not confirm a causal relationship between illness severity and active coping in this study.
Keywords: Epilepsy, Illness uncertainty, social support, Active coping, parent
Received: 12 Feb 2025; Accepted: 30 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Lei, Yao and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yongai Zhang, Xi'an Medical University, Xi'an, China
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