Prospective association of parental and child internalizing symptoms: Mediation of parenting practices and irritability

Abstract

Maternal internalizing symptoms have been linked with child internalizing symptoms, but paternal internalizing difficulties have received little attention. Our aims were to prospectively analyse the simultaneous effect of maternal and paternal internalizing symptoms on child internalizing difficulties, examining gender differences, and to verify the mediating effect of parenting practices and child irritability. The sample included 470 families assessed at child ages 3, 6, 8, and 11. Multi‐group structural equation modelling was performed with Mplus8.2. Complete equivalence was found between boys and girls for all paths. Maternal internalizing symptoms at age 3 had an indirect effect on child internalizing symptoms at age 11, via irritability at age 8. Paternal internalizing symptoms at age 3 were not associated with any of the variables under study. Maternal internalizing symptoms and child irritability are targets for intervention in order to prevent child internalizing difficulties.

Prevalence, stability, and predictive utility of the Multidimensional Assessment of Preschoolers Scales clinically optimized irritability score: Pragmatic early assessment of mental disorder risk

“…Identifying vulnerability to psychopathology as early as possible (i.e., early childhood) within the neurodevelopmental sequence is key to prevention, a crucial insight from the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework (Mittal & Wakschlag, 2017). Elevated irritability is the most robust early marker of transdiagnostic vulnerability to common and modifiable psychopathologies (i.e., internalizing and externalizing syndromes) (Valencia et al., 2021; Wakschlag et al., 2018). In the provider's office, elevated irritability may present as complaints about frequent and/or severe tantrums and irritable mood (Brotman et al., 2017; Wakschlag et al., 2015; Wiggins et al., 2018), yet providers face a high level of decisional uncertainty as to whether such behavior is normative and/or transient versus an indicator of emergent psychiatric problems.…”