This study examines how a 2013 Arizona law on shared parenting would affect living arrangements, and thus mental health measures. There were two hypotheses. According to the Law Change Hypothesis, it was hypothesized that parenting time in Arizona would be more equal following the 2013 Arizona law change while there would be no change in parenting time in other states following the 2013 Arizona law change. It was further hypothesized that child mental health would be better after the law change in Arizona with no change being seen in other states. Results of this study were almost completely inconsistent with the hypothesis. According to the Law Reflect Hypothesis, the law is actually reflecting the behavior of the community and their thoughts on equal parenting time becoming more favorable, and therefore a change towards more equal parenting time would be found prior to 2013 in Arizona with no change seen in other states. Furthermore, as the Arizona community’s behavior changed, child mental health would be better with no change being seen in other states. Regressions found that a small change toward more equal parenting and closeness with father was prior to 2013 for Arizona students, compared to out-of-state students, although it did not find that the year of divorce resulted in less anxiety, stress, and depression. This partially agrees with past research that the 2013 law is working as intended, even if it started working earlier than we thought. This does not agree with previous research stating there is a connection between equal parenting and better mental health. This is important because this study questions the efficacy of an important and controversial policy. If future studies are consistent with this one, the effectiveness of the Arizona 2013 law change on mental health will need to be further evaluated.

Adolescence is an important period of scaffolding for educational attainment, which is among the strongest predictors of outcomes in multiple domains. Parents who encourage academic success and promote self-regulation may enhance their offspring’s educational attainment. However, parents with externalizing disorders present a complex constellation of risk factors, including low educational attainment and poor parenting, and are more likely to have children with high levels of disinhibition. Previous research has identified low parental education, poor parenting and adolescent impulsivity as threats to educational attainment, but has not examined risk factors for discrepancies in educational attainment among siblings of the same family. Furthermore, studies have not examined the between- and within-family mechanisms that may explain why adolescents with externalizing parents have low educational attainment. The current study addressed these gaps by testing between- and within-family predictors of educational attainment using data from a longitudinal, multigenerational study that oversampled families at risk for alcohol use disorder. The sample consisted of 555 biological siblings within 240 families. We tested whether parental externalizing predicted lower educational attainment through parents’ own lower education, parents’ differential treatment of offspring, and impulsivity. Results suggested that between families, parents with externalizing disorders had lower educational attainment and more impulsive offspring, but did not exhibit increased differential parenting. Within families, siblings with greater impulsivity had lower educational attainment, whereas receiving more preferential maternal treatment than one’s siblings predicted higher educational attainment. Low parental educational attainment mediated the relation between parental externalizing disorders and low offspring educational attainment.

Suicide is a significant public health problem, with incidence rates and lethality continuing to increase yearly. Given the large human and financial cost of suicide worldwide alongside the lack of progress in suicide prediction, more research is needed to inform suicide prevention and intervention efforts. This study approaches suicide from the lens of suicide note-leaving behavior, which can provide important information on predictors of suicide. Specifically, this study adds to the existing literature on note-leaving by examining history of suicidality, mental health problems, and their interaction in predicting suicide note-leaving, in addition to demographic predictors of note-leaving examined in previous research using data from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS, n = 98,515). We fit a logistic regression model predicting leaving a suicide note or not, the results of which indicated that those with mental health problems or a history of suicidality were more likely to leave a suicide note than those without such histories, and those with both mental health problems and a history of suicidality were most likely to leave a suicide note. These findings reinforce the need to tailor suicide prevention efforts toward identifying and targeting higher risk populations.