Childhood chronic illness is associated with deleterious effects on caregivers’ mental health and children’s socio-emotional development. This study investigated the mediation role of caregivers’ mental health on the association between children’s chronic illness and internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems in a sample of low-SES Brazilian families. Participants comprised 111 primary caregivers of 113 children aged between 7 and 11 years. A sample of 57 caregivers of children with chronic illness and a comparison group of 54 caregivers of healthy children were assessed regarding the following variables: family SES (Hollingshead criteria); caregivers’ sleep disturbances (PSQI), common mental disorders symptoms (SRQ-20); stress (LISS); and children’s internalizing and externalizing problems (CBCL/6-18). The chronic illness group scored higher than the healthy group in all the assessed variables, with the exception of the externalizing problems variable. Moreover, caregivers’ mental health problems presented positive correlations with children’s behavior problems and negative correlations with family SES. Using SEM, mediation analyses revealed a unidimensional latent variable, caregiver mental health problems, which mediated the relationship between children’s chronic illness and their behavior problems. Children’s chronic illness was associated with higher levels of mental health problems in caregivers, which in turn was linked to children’s higher externalizing and internalizing problems. Psychosocial intervention and policies addressing caregivers’ mental health and financial support to low-income families may benefit the socio-emotional development of chronically ill children.

儿童慢性病对照顾者的心理健康和儿童的社会情感发展具有有害影响。本研究调查了在低社会经济地位的巴西家庭样本中，看护者的心理健康对儿童慢性病与内化和外化行为问题之间关联的中介作用。参与者包括 113 名 7 至 11 岁儿童的 111 名主要照顾者。对 57 名慢性病儿童看护人的样本和 54 名健康儿童看护人的对照组进行了以下变量评估：家庭 SES（霍林斯黑德标准）；照顾者的睡眠障碍 (PSQI)、常见的精神障碍症状 (SRQ-20)；压力（LISS）；和儿童的内化和外化问题（CBCL/6-18）。慢性病组在所有评估变量中的得分均高于健康组，但外化问题变量除外。此外，看护者的心理健康问题与儿童的行为问题呈正相关，与家庭 SES 呈负相关。使用 SEM，中介分析揭示了一个单维潜在变量，即照顾者心理健康问题，它在儿童慢性病与其行为问题之间的关系中起到了中介作用。儿童的慢性病与看护者的心理健康问题水平较高有关，而这反过来又与儿童较高的外化和内化问题有关。