Coping With the Stress of Parental Depression II: Adolescent and Parent Reports of Coping and Adjustment

Abstract

This study examined associations between adolescents' self-reports and parents' reports of adolescents' exposure to family stress, coping, and symptoms of anxiety/depression and aggression in a sample of 78 adolescent offspring of depressed parents. Significant cross-informant correlations were found between adolescents' reports of family stress, their stress responses, and their coping and parents' reports of adolescents' symptoms of anxiety/depression and aggression, but not between parents' reports of adolescents' stress and coping and adolescents' self-reported symptoms. Adolescents' reports of secondary control engagement coping and involuntary engagement stress responses mediated the relation between adolescents' reports of parental stress and parents' reports of adolescents' anxiety/depression symptoms. Moderate levels of correspondence were found in the correlations between parent and adolescent reports of adolescents' exposure to stress, coping, stress responses, and symptoms even after controlling for parents' current depressive symptoms. However, depressed parents reported higher levels of symptoms of anxiety/depression and aggression and more family stress than did their adolescent offspring. Implications for future research on coping and adjustment in offspring of depressed parents are highlighted.

Parenting and child externalizing behaviors: Are the associations specific or diffuse?

“…A computer search of PsycINFO was conducted using various combinations of the following search terms in both keyword and title searches: parental depression, maternal depression, major depression, depressed mood, depressive symptoms, parenting behavior, mother-child interactions, parentchild interactions, child internalizing problems, and child externalizing problems. Additionally, reference lists from review (i.e., Goodman & Gotlieb, 1999;Kane & Garber, 2004;Lovejoy et al, 2000) and empirical (e.g., Jaser et al, 2005) papers were consulted to identify other relevant studies. This preliminary search resulted in 121 studies that examine the links between parental depression or depressive symptoms, parenting behaviors, and child outcome.…”

“…Finally, we considered only those studies examining children in the age range of two to eighteen, as our child outcomes of interest (externalizing and internalizing problems) cannot be appropriately diagnosed or reliably assessed in children younger than two, and we defined children as individuals younger than 18 years of age. From the original 121 studies identified, 17 met the above-described inclusion criteria (i.e., Brody, Kim, Murray, & Brown, 2004;Chi & Hinshaw, 2002;Conger, Patterson, & Ge, 1995;Conger et al, 1992;Conger et al, 1993;DeGarmo, Patterson, & Forgatch, 2004;Dumas & Serketich, 1994;Fendrich, Warner, & Weissman, 1990;Frye & Garber, 2005;Hammen et al, 2004;Herwig, Wirtz, & Bengel, 2004;Jaser et al, 2005;Kim & Brody, 2005;Low & Stocker, 2005;Marchand & Hock, 1998;Nelson, Hammen, Brennan, & Ullman, 2003;Panaccione & Wahler, 1986).…”

“…First, 13 of 17 studies (76%) utilized samples, typically with community participants, from which only measures of depressive symptoms (e.g., BDI) were collected. The remaining four studies (i.e., Fendrich et al, 1990;Frye & Garber, 2005;Hammen et al, 2004;Jaser et al, 2005) (24%) examined clinically depressed parents and included a measure of clinical depression. Thus, the existing data provide little information concerning parenting specificity and child outcome within the context of parental clinical depression.…”

“…Only one data analytic strategy, correlational analyses of parenting behaviors and child outcomes, emerged with sufficient frequency in the 17 studies reviewed to allow quantitative analyses to be conducted. Regression analyses were conducted in only five studies (i.e., Frye & Garber, 2005;Herwig et al, 2004;Jaser et al, 2005;Low & Stocker, 2005;Nelson et al, 2003), none of which provided sufficient information to formally test whether unique or differential relations emerged. Further, interaction terms were not entered in the analyses of any of these five studies, preventing examination of interactional specificity.…”

Coping with Social Stress: Implications for Psychopathology in Young Adolescent Girls

“…In turn, how an adolescent adapts to these experiences is often associated with the expression of emotional and behavioral problems (Compas et al 2001). Much of the research examining how children and adolescents manage and adapt to stressful experiences demonstrates that coping strategies or responses to stress, more broadly, may buffer the effects of stressful experiences, ultimately reducing the likelihood of subsequent psychosocial problems (Jaser et al 2005;Wadsworth et al 2005). However, the stress and coping literature also suggests that the stressful situation itself may influence the range and type of responses to stress, in turn impacting adjustment (Compas et al 1999).…”