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Family Structure, Transitions and Psychiatric Disorders Among Puerto Rican Children

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Abstract

This paper examines whether family structure and its transitions are associated with internalizing and externalizing psychiatric disorders among Puerto Rican-origin children. It uses longitudinal data (three waves) from the Boricua Youth Study, which includes probability samples of children in the South Bronx (New York) and San Juan (Puerto Rico) (n = 2,142). We also examine factors which may explain how family structure and transitions may be related to child psychiatric disorders. Our results show that for both internalizing and externalizing disorders there were no significant differences between children of cohabiting (biological or step) parents or of single parents compared to children of married biological parents. In Puerto Rico only, transitioning once from a two-parent family to a single-parent family was related to child internalizing disorders. Family transitions were not associated with externalizing disorders at either site. Context may be an important factor shaping the risk that family dissolution is followed by an internalizing disorder among children.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank The Boricua Youth Study team, staff and volunteers, for their help with executing this study; especially Dana Rae Vasio and Ravi Jha who helped with the final edits before submitting the definitive version of the paper.

Funding

The Boricua Youth Study has been supported by the National Institute of Health [MH56401 (Bird), DA033172 (Duarte), AA020191 (Duarte), HD060072 (Martins, Duarte, Canino) and MH098374 (Alegria, Canino, Duarte). The first author, Ms. Santesteban, has been supported by an Advanced Training Fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology from The Alicia Koplowitz Foundation (Spain) for the completion of her fellowship and PhD Dissertation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University Medical Center, 1051 Riverside Drive, Unit 43, Room 5223, New York, NY, 10032, USA

    Olga Santesteban-Echarri, Ruth E. Eisenberg, Hector R. Bird & Cristiane S. Duarte

  2. Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación y Psicología, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

    Olga Santesteban-Echarri

  3. Behavioral Sciences Research Institute, University of Puerto Rico Medical School, San Juan, PR, USA

    Glorisa J. Canino

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  1. Olga Santesteban-Echarri
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  2. Ruth E. Eisenberg
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  3. Hector R. Bird
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  4. Glorisa J. Canino
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  5. Cristiane S. Duarte
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Correspondence to Cristiane S. Duarte.

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Ethics

The results presented in this manuscript are original. All co-authors have substantially contributed to the research, have approved the manuscript and agreed to the by-line order. We confirm that none of the results have been published elsewhere and are not under consideration by another journal with the exception of an abstract (preliminary results) presented on the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Meeting, October 2013. We have complied with APA ethical standards in the treatment of all assessment participants, and the study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and the University of Puerto Rico Medical School. All participants provided informed consent to participate in the study and assent forms for younger children.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Santesteban-Echarri, O., Eisenberg, R.E., Bird, H.R. et al. Family Structure, Transitions and Psychiatric Disorders Among Puerto Rican Children. J Child Fam Stud 25, 3417–3429 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-016-0498-2

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