Specific Pathways from Parental Distress Reactions to Adolescent Depressive Symptoms: The Mediating Role of Youths' Reactions to Negative Life Events

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-1-2022

Publication Title

J Psychopathol Behav Assess

Abstract

The current multimethod longitudinal study examines how parents' distress reactions to adolescents' negative emotions may shape youths' own perceptions of negative life events and subsequent increases in depressive symptomology. Ninety adolescents (41 girls, 49 boys, average age = 16.5 years old) and their parents were assessed over three timepoints. We found that greater parent-reported distress reactions to adolescents' emotions predicted subsequent increase in youths' own self-reported negative reactions to stressful experiences over a two-week period, which in turn predicted steeper increases in youth-reported depressive symptoms across this same two-week period. Moreover, youths' negative reactions mediated the relation between parent emotion socialization and increases in adolescent depressive symptoms. These findings support the use of interventions that simultaneously target parent and child distress to prevent the onset of adolescent depression.

PubMed ID

36189339

Volume

44

Issue

3

First Page

750

Last Page

762

Find It @ Sladen

Share

COinS