ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology for Clinical Settings
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1601162
Youth Benefit Finding and Caregiving in a Parental Illness Context: A Latent Profile Analysis
Provisionally accepted
Giulia Landi1*
Kenneth Pakenham2
Jade Pilato3Géraldine Dorard3
Aurélie Untas3
Roberto Cattivelli1Silvana Grandi1
Eliana Tossani1- 1Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
- 2The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
- 3Université Paris Cité, Paris, Île-de-France, France
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This study used a person-centered approach to identify patterns of engagement in benefit finding (BF) and caregiving in youth who have a parent with a serious illness. A total of 403 youth completed questionnaires in a cross-sectional study. Latent profile analyses revealed four profiles. The distribution of caregiving and participants across profiles reflected the caregiving continuum. The 'low BF & caregiving profile' had the lowest caregiving and highest proportion of participants marking the low end of the continuum, while the 'moderate BF & extremely high caregiving profile' had the highest caregiving and the lowest proportion of participants marking the high end. The two mid-continuum profiles reflected mid-to-high proportions of caregiving and participants. Results highlighted a corresponding continuum in BF, where engagement varies in sync with caregiving intensity. Profiles differed on demographics, caregiving context, health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and mental health variables. The two mid-continuum profiles reported high caregiving and moderate-to-high BF and evidenced better HRQoL and mental health than the profile at the highest end of the caregiving continuum, but worse HRQoL and mental health than the profile at the lowest end. Despite high caregiving, these two profiles evidenced moderately high HRQoL and mental health, indicating that BF mitigates the adverse impacts of high caregiving. Results also supported the BF theoretical proposal that caregiving must be sufficiently intense to trigger BF. Support services should reduce youth caregiving responsibilities and encourage youth caregivers to explore the positive aspects of their caregiving role.
Keywords: Benefit finding, Parental illness, youth caregiving, latent profile analysis, Healthrelated quality of life, Mental Health
Received: 27 Mar 2025; Accepted: 30 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Landi, Pakenham, Pilato, Dorard, Untas, Cattivelli, Grandi and Tossani. 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: Giulia Landi, Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
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