2019/12/16 by Ayala Ben‐Pazi, Gil Goldzweig, Gerdina Hendrika Maria Pijnenborg +2
Health Professions · Psychology · #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Family and Disability Support Research #Family and Patient Care in Intensive Care Units
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/famp.12517
crossref issued 2019/12/16 · crossref published 2019/12/16 · crossref published-online 2019/12/16 · openalex publication_date 2019/12/16 · crossref created 2019/12/17 · crossref published-print 2020/12/01 · crossref deposited 2023/08/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Empathy is considered a positive aspect of caregiving, although in certain circumstances, being empathic might increase the burden of caregivers. The current study assessed the associations between empathy, parental efficacy, and family burden among parents of children who were hospitalized in a psychiatric unit. Specifically, we examined whether the association between empathy and family burden was moderated by the parents' sense of self-efficacy. Seventy parents of children with psychiatric disorders, hospitalized in an inpatient psychiatric unit, filled out questionnaires of empathy, parental efficacy, and family burden. Results supported a moderating role of parental efficacy between empathy and family burden (interaction effect: β = -1.72, p = .0406). Specifically, empathy was positively related to family burden among parents with low self-efficacy (conditional effect = 0.70, p = .032) and negatively related to family burden among parents with high self-efficacy (conditional effect = -0.39, p = N.S). Implications for practice include the importance of self-efficacy and address the possible negative implications of empathy among parents of children treated in a psychiatric hospital.