Amsterdam 2015
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| Abstract #2053 - Cognitive development in children and adolescents | ||||
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Session: 16.1: Cognitive development in children and adolescents (Parallel) on Wednesday @ 14.30-16.00 in C001 Chaired by Xiaoming Li, Igor Grant Authors: Presenting Author: Dr Wei Wei - Wayne Stats University School of Medicine, United States |
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| Additional Authors: | ||||
| Aim: Background People living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) usually experience a significant level of enacted stigma. Such stigma is enacted not only against HIV infected individuals but also against their children. These children often experience humiliation, limited social support, and alienation from their relatives and friends. As a result, they greatly suffer from both physical and psychological harm, which is more likely to have a negative influence on their post-traumatic growth. Objective Although much research has been done on children and HIV/AIDS, studies about HIV-related stigma and children of parents living with HIV are still scarce. Thus, for those children who are affected by parental HIV/AIDS, this study aimed at exploring perceived social support, helpfulness, and emotional regulations as potential factors which can alleviate children’s psychological symptoms caused by HIV-related stigma, and also possess a positive influence to their post-traumatic growth. Therefore, hypothesis was tested by the current study: Post-traumatic growth would be negatively influenced by enacted stigma and perceived social support, hopefulness, and emotional regulation mediate the associations between enacted stigma and post-traumatic growth. The difference of the indirect effects among three mediation paths with enacted stigma on post-traumatic growth were also examined. | ||||
| Method / Issue: Method Data were collected from 790 children affected by parental HIV/AIDS (aged 6-18 years M=10.51, SD=1.99) in Henan, China, in 2012. All participants responded a questionnaire including questions on enacted stigma, perceived social support, hopefulness, emotional regulation, and post-traumatic growth. | ||||
| Results / Comments: Results The results showed that post-traumatic growth was significantly negative predicted by enacted stigma [ß=-.098, F(1,766) = 8.79, p<.005]. Further, the finding demonstrated indirect effects of enacted stigma on post-traumatic growth via perceived social support [indirect effect = -.01, 95%CI, (-0.025, -0.003)], then, significant indirect effect of enacted stigma on post-traumatic growth through hopefulness [indirect effect = -.02, 95%CI, (-0.03, -0.006)], as well as significant indirect effect of enacted stigma on post-traumatic growth via emotional regulations [indirect effect = -.043, 95%CI, (-0.07, -0.002)]. Furthermore, this study reveals a significant difference of indirect effects among these three different mediation paths. In other words, statistically significant differences between the indirect effect of path1 (through perceived social support) and path3 (through emotional regulations) [effect =.03, 95%CI, (0.01, 0.06)] and there is a significant difference between the indirect effects of path2 (via hopefulness) and path3 (via emotional regulations) [effect =.03, 95%CI, (0.004, 0.06)]. | ||||
| Discussion: Discussion This study found that children affected by parental HIV/AIDS who have suffered a high level of enacted stigma, which brings about low growth level of children’s post-traumatic growth. Nevertheless, the results demonstrated strong evidence that perceived social support, hopefulness, and emotional regulations performed as potentially resilient factors, which could promote and enhance a high level of children’s post-traumatic growth when they have experienced HIV-related stigma. Further, this study urgently appealed that the broader society should give more social support to vulnerable children, supplying more concerning to help them to build the hopefulness about their future. Especially, it might have the possibility of developing formal or informal training to teach those children how to efficiently manage their emotions in the presence of the adversity. | ||||
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