Family cohesion, shame-proneness, expressive suppression, and adolescent mental health—A path model approach

Abstract

ObjectiveThe family remains one of the most important relationship systems into early adulthood and provides an important foundation for lifelong mental health. Dysfunctional family cohesion can promote adjustment problems in adolescents and might also affect adolescents’ self-concept and strategies for coping with emotional distress. To test these relationships and the underlying mechanisms, we proposed a dual mediation model describing the associations between family cohesion and internalizing and externalizing problems, mediated by shame-proneness and expressive suppression.MethodsA sample of 526 German-speaking adolescents aged 14 to 18 years from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland participated in an online self-report survey encompassing questionnaires on family cohesion, shame-proneness, expressive suppression, and psychological problems. We tested a path model to examine the indirect pathways of the associations between family cohesion and internalizing and externalizing problems via shame-proneness and expressive suppression, while controlling for age, gender, and guilt-proneness.ResultsWe found a significant dual mediation of the associations between family cohesion and internalizing and externalizing problems by shame-proneness and expressive suppression. The indirect pathways were all significant, except for the indirect pathway from family cohesion to externalizing problems via shame-proneness.DiscussionOur results provide a model for the mechanisms by which disrupted family cohesion can be related to psychological problems in adolescents. Expressive suppression emerged as crucial when considering the consequences of shame-proneness in adolescents, as it was only indirectly related to externalizing problems via expressive suppression.

Facing Pediatric Rheumatic Diseases: The Role of Disease Activity and Parental Emotion Regulation Strategy in Parents’ and Children’s Psychological Adjustment

“…Finally, our research revealed that parents' cognitive reappraisal plays a crucial role in ameliorating children's emotional difficulties and hyperactivity-inattention symptoms, while parents' expressive suppression is primarily associated with heightened hyperactivity-inattention symptoms. This seems to suggest that a greater utilization of adaptive emotion regulation strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal, within the parental context can promote a family environment that fosters the open expression of emotions and facilitates effective communication among family members [16]. Such an environment is linked to improved psychological outcomes, as it serves to mitigate emotional and behavioral challenges in both parents and children [16] and enhances their ability to cope with issues related to illness.…”

“…This seems to suggest that a greater utilization of adaptive emotion regulation strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal, within the parental context can promote a family environment that fosters the open expression of emotions and facilitates effective communication among family members [16]. Such an environment is linked to improved psychological outcomes, as it serves to mitigate emotional and behavioral challenges in both parents and children [16] and enhances their ability to cope with issues related to illness. Conversely, the use of maladaptive strategies, such as emotional suppression, particularly in the context of chronic disease [38], is linked to unfavorable psychological outcomes.…”

“…In this context, parental emotion regulation has particular importance because it facilitates the acceptance of the disease by both parents and children [16]. In fact, parents with high levels of distress and who tend to use maladaptive regulation strategies, such as rumination or expressive suppression, can affect the psychological well-being of their affected children, their adaptation to the disease, and consequently their levels of pain and disability [17].…”

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“…Families that are disengaged have strong limits between their members and show minimal emotional bonds and interactions among them [ 15 , 16 ]. Wark et al (2003) [ 17 ] assumed that increased levels of family disengagement could be connected to emotional neglect as a type of child maltreatment; and hypothesized that emotional child neglect would be related to lower levels of balanced cohesion and adaptability and would be associated with higher levels of psychological distress.…”

How does family functioning contribute to academic-related outcomes of Chinese adolescents: the mediating role of spirituality

“…Apart from the educational environment ( Tripon et al, 2023 ), family is also an important foundation of adolescent psychological well-being (e.g., Li et al, 2022 ; van Eickels et al, 2022 ). Different family functioning models such as Cox and Paley’s (1997) family systems theory and Conger et al’s (1994) family stress model of economic hardship support the conjecture that favorable family functioning promotes the well-being of adolescents ( Stewart et al, 2022 ; Zhu et al, 2022 ).…”