Highlights
- •Mothers with chronic pain were more likely to endorse ≥4 adverse experiences.
- •Higher parent childhood adversity scores correlated with higher child depression.
- •Higher adversity scores correlated with lower physical and social functioning.
- •Path model identified the relation between maternal experiences and child outcomes.
Abstract
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs; eg, parental divorce, physical or sexual abuse)
are more prevalent in individuals with chronic pain compared with the general population.
Both increased maternal ACEs and chronic pain have been associated with poor physical
and emotional functioning in offspring. However, the mechanisms driving these associations
are poorly understood. Thus, this cross-sectional study evaluated the relation between
maternal ACEs, mothers’ current functioning, and children's physical and emotional
functioning in a sample of mothers with chronic pain and their 8- to 12-year-old children.
Results indicated a higher prevalence of ≥1 ACE in this sample of mothers with chronic
pain (84%) compared with normative data from a community sample of women. Higher maternal
ACE scores corresponded with lower physical and social functioning, greater anxiety
and depressive symptoms, greater fatigue and sleep disturbances, and greater pain
intensity and pain interference in mothers. Higher maternal ACE scores significantly
correlated with higher child self-reported depressive symptoms, but not somatic symptoms
or functional impairment. A path model indicated that maternal depressive symptoms
accounted for the relation between higher maternal ACE scores and children's depressive
symptoms. Intervening on maternal depression among mothers with chronic pain may reduce
the impact of intergenerational ACE transmission.
Perspective: This article presents evidence regarding the intergenerational impact
of ACEs in a large sample of mothers with chronic pain and their school-aged children.
Maternal depressive symptoms accounted for the relation between maternal ACEs and
children's depressive symptoms providing evidence regarding targets for preventive
interventions.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: April 18, 2019
Accepted:
April 15,
2019
Received in revised form:
March 1,
2019
Received:
September 7,
2018
Footnotes
Supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01 HD082200; PI Wilson), as well as by CTSA awards UL1TR000128/UL1TR002369. A.L.S. is supported by award numbers TL1TR002371 and T32GM108554 from NIH. D.S.C. is supported by the NIH Common Fund and Office of Scientific Workforce Diversity under three awards UL1GM118964, RL5GM118963, and TL4GM118965, administered by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Supplementary data accompanying this article are available online at www.jpain.org and www.sciencedirect.com.
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© 2019 by the American Pain Society
