Children’s self-blame appraisals about their mothers’ depressive symptoms and risk for internalizing symptoms.

Abstract

Maternal depressive symptoms are a robust predictor of children's risk for internalizing symptoms; yet not all children are negatively affected by exposure to their mothers' symptoms. The present study tested children's self-blame appraisals as a moderator of the association between maternal depressive symptoms and children's internalizing symptoms, controlling for children's negative attributional style. We hypothesized that the relation between maternal depressive symptoms and children's internalizing symptoms would be stronger for children who blamed themselves more for their mothers' symptoms. Participants were 129 mother-child dyads (M child age = 13.63, SD = 2.2; 52.7% female; 38.8% White, 31% African American, 22.5% Latinx/Hispanic) recruited from the community. Results indicated that maternal depressive symptoms were associated with higher levels of children's internalizing symptoms for children who reported higher, but not lower, levels of self-blame appraisals. Results were consistent using mothers' or children's reports of their own and each other's symptoms. The findings highlight the importance of assessing children's appraisals about their mothers' depressive symptoms, and suggest that preventive interventions should target children who endorse higher levels of selfblame appraisals. Further, children's self-blame appraisals about mothers' depressive symptoms should be considered as a target of treatment for child internalizing disorders.

The Transition to Adulthood in Children of Depressed Parents: Long-Term Follow-Up Data from the Family Talk Preventive Intervention Project

“…Both instrumental caretaking (i.e., taking on additional responsibilities around the home) and emotional caretaking (i.e., comforting the depressed parent) are positively correlated with adolescents’ reports of anxiety and depressive symptoms [ 20 ]. Children of depressed parents may blame themselves for parental symptoms, which places them at further risk for internalizing symptoms themselves [ 22 ], and emerging adult children of depressed parents acknowledge the burden of navigating their parents’ moods [ 23 , 24 ].…”

“…We also report perceptions of the transition to adulthood with a depressed parent through Likert-scale questionnaires with both young adults and parents and through qualitative interviews with young adults. Offspring of depressed adults are at higher risk for depression and ongoing experiences of stressors [ 1 , 37 ] and often feel responsible for parents’ symptoms [ 22 ], yet many children of depressed parents do not develop depression themselves [ 38 , 39 ]. Therefore, our specific hypotheses were as follows:…”