Matching Items (2)
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- All Subjects: Parenting--Psychological aspects.
- Creators: Roberts, Nicole
Description
Mood disorders are highly prevalent, especially in adolescent populations. One potential cause of the widespread nature of these disorders is the formation of stigma around emotionality. Emotion research, while extensive, has not expanded to capture how a parent’s emotion regulation and expression may lead to stigmatized behaviors in their child affecting that child’s mental health into adulthood. The current thesis aimed to investigate the relevance of this novel concept – emotionality stigma – in the relationship between parental emotionality and adult-child mental health. Using social learning theory, parental emotionality was predicted to influence a child’s emotionality into adulthood. Specifically, this thesis investigated if parental emotion over- and under-expression (dysregulation) would influence adult-children to perceive a stigma around emotionality leading to worse mental health, whereas well-regulated parental emotion expression would relate to adult-child emotional intelligence, leading to better mental health. Moreover, it was predicted that these relationships would differ depending on parent and child gender. To examine these ideas, data was collected from 1,136 college and community individuals through a university survey system and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Using a combination of linear regression, PROCESS, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) models, the results supported the proposed hypotheses. As predicted, parental dysregulation in childhood predicted impaired adult-child mental health, whereas parental regulation in childhood predicted lower levels of adult-child depression and anxiety. Additionally, emotionality stigma and emotional intelligence partially mediated the relationship between parental emotionality and adult-child mental health. Furthermore, results showed interesting gender differences; male participants were more impacted by both maternal and paternal emotionality as compared to female participants. These findings not only build on emotion research, but also have numerous applications in practice including improving parenting classes and family therapy interventions. This study is the first to explore the role of parental emotionality on adult-child mental health through stigma and emotional intelligence.
ContributorsSeely, Hayley (Author) / Mickelson, Kristin D. (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Roberts, Nicole (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This study was designed to contribute to the existing research on the coping behaviors, social support, and mental health outcomes in parents of children with epilepsy in the United States. A questionnaire was disseminated and administered via a web-based interface. One hundred and fifty-two participants, predominantly Caucasian, married women with more than one child under the age of eighteen completed the survey.
After controlling for demographic variables, mediational analysis revealed that perceived social support explained the relation between perceived child disability and depression and anxiety. Additionally, it partially explained the relation between perceived family burden and depression, anxiety, and stress. Further, parent perception of their child's disability and perceived family burden did not predict emotion-focused or social support coping. However, both emotion-focused and social support coping behaviors were related to reductions in depression in this sample.
After controlling for demographic variables, mediational analysis revealed that perceived social support explained the relation between perceived child disability and depression and anxiety. Additionally, it partially explained the relation between perceived family burden and depression, anxiety, and stress. Further, parent perception of their child's disability and perceived family burden did not predict emotion-focused or social support coping. However, both emotion-focused and social support coping behaviors were related to reductions in depression in this sample.
ContributorsCarlson, Jeff (Author) / Miller, Paul A. (Thesis advisor) / Vargas, Perla (Committee member) / Roberts, Nicole (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015