Time Spent with Parents Predicts Change in Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder

Publication Date

8-15-2019

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Parents, Adolescents, Time spent, Depressive symptoms, Family functioning

Abstract

Research with community samples suggests that non-affective features of families, such as the amount of time parents and adolescents spend together, affect depressive symptoms in adolescents. It is possible, however, that spending time with parents not only protects against the onset of depressive symptoms, but also reduces symptoms in adolescents who are already depressed. The current study was designed to test this formulation while also examining whether affective dimensions of family functioning – specifically parental warmth – accounted for or moderated observed associations. Finally, we tested the reverse direction of the associations, examining whether greater severity of depression in adolescents results in parents spending less time with them. Forty-one adolescents (ages 14 to 17 years) who met criteria for a current major depressive episode participated in the present study with one parent. Once each month for six time points, dyads completed reports of depressive symptoms and the amount of time parents and adolescents spent with each other. Participants also completed measures of parental warmth. Results of lagged multilevel modeling indicated that spending more time with a parent predicted fewer depressive symptoms in adolescents at the following assessment relative to their mean; in contrast, greater severity of depressive symptoms did not predict spending less time with a parent at the following assessment. In contrast, parental warmth did not account for or moderate the association between time together and depressive symptoms. These results suggest that non-affective dimensions of family life, specifically spending more time with parents, have beneficial effects on depressive symptoms in adolescents diagnosed with depression.

Copyright Date

3-7-2019

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Rights Holder

Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

Provenance

Received from CHORUS

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

8 pgs

File Size

362 KB

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Manczak, E. M., Ordaz, S. J., Singh, M. K., Goyer, M. S., & Gotlib, I. H. (2019). Time spent with parents predicts change in depressive symptoms in adolescents with major depressive disorder. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 47(8), 1401-1408. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-019-00526-5

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Publication Title

Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology

Volume

47

Issue

8

First Page

1401

Last Page

1408

ISSN

2730-7174

PubMed ID

30847667

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