Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, 7 George Square, EH8 9JZ, Edinburgh, UK.
Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol. 2023 Jun;51(6):847-858. doi: 10.1007/s10802-023-01034-3. Epub 2023 Feb 7.
Growing evidence has suggested that parental mental illness and child internalizing and externalizing problems tend to co-occur and engender risk for adverse child outcomes; however, there is considerable heterogeneity in their joint developmental trajectories. This study aimed to evaluate the joint developmental trajectories of maternal and paternal psychological distress and child internalizing and externalizing problems from early childhood to middle adolescence. Given that suicide and self-harm are major public health issues in adolescence and often occur in the context of other mental health issues, we also examined the association between these joint trajectories and these outcomes in adolescence. Parallel-process latent class growth analysis was applied to 14 years of follow-up data from a large-scale, nationally representative sample of youths participating in the UK's Millennium Cohort Study (MCS; n = 12,520, 50.9% male). Results showed the best-fitting solution had four trajectory classes: (1) low symptoms, 59.0%; (2) moderate symptoms in children, 22.5%; (3) notable symptoms in fathers, 10.7%; and (4) co-occurring maternal and child symptoms, 7.8%. The trajectory groups differed in their self-harm and suicide attempts in adolescence, underscoring the possible importance of the roles of both parental distress and child problem behaviors processes in these outcomes. Future studies will be valuable to rigorously test the directionality and the respective roles of parents and children in this association. Our findings suggest the need for two-generation mental health intervention programs that are tailored based on co-developmental trajectory group membership.
越来越多的证据表明，父母的精神疾病和儿童的内化和外化问题往往同时发生，并给儿童带来不良后果的风险；然而，它们的共同发展轨迹存在很大的异质性。本研究旨在评估从儿童早期到青少年中期母亲和父亲的心理困扰以及儿童内化和外化问题的共同发展轨迹。鉴于自杀和自残是青少年时期的主要公共卫生问题，而且经常发生在其他心理健康问题的背景下，我们还研究了这些共同轨迹与青少年时期这些结果之间的关系。平行过程潜类增长分析应用于来自英国千禧年队列研究（MCS）的大规模、全国代表性青少年样本的 14 年随访数据（n=12520，50.9%为男性）。结果表明，最佳拟合解有四个轨迹类别：（1）低症状，占 59.0%；（2）儿童中度症状，占 22.5%；（3）父亲明显症状，占 10.7%；（4）母亲和儿童共同症状，占 7.8%。轨迹组在青少年时期的自我伤害和自杀企图方面存在差异，强调了父母困扰和儿童问题行为过程在这些结果中的可能重要性。未来的研究将有助于严格检验父母和孩子在这种关联中的方向和各自作用。我们的研究结果表明，需要基于共同发展轨迹组的成员身份制定针对两代人的心理健康干预计划。
