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Parental and Adolescents’ Anxiety during the COVID-19 Outbreak in Rural China: The role of Parent-child Communication

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Abstract

Purpose

It has been suggested that the intergenerational transmission of anxiety may be an important contributor to the high prevalence of anxiety in adolescents. The objectives of this study are to examine whether and how parental anxiety is related to adolescent’s anxiety and to explore the associations of parental anxiety and parent-child communication with adolescents’ anxiety across different grades.

Methods

The current survey was conducted online from February 8th to February 27th, 2020.The questionnaires were distributed and retrieved through a web-based platform. A total of 6196 Chinese rural adolescents from grade seven to twelve (age ranging from 11 to 18 years old) were included.

Results

In this study, parental anxiety was significantly associated with higher adolescent anxiety (β = 0.14, p < 0.001) and this association was statically strongest at grade twelve. Besides, children with problematic parent-child communication related to COVID-19 reported elevated anxiety (β = 0.05, p < 0.01). In contrast, effective parent-child communication about COVID-19 mitigated the level of anxiety transmitted from parent to child (β = -0.04, p < 0.05).

Conclusions

During the COVID-19 epidemic, parents’ anxiety was related to adolescents’ anxiety. In addition, parent-child communication plays a moderating role in the above relationship. These findings emphasize the importance of implementing more psycho-education programs that specifically target parents’ emotion regulation and effective communication abilities to ameliorate the psychopathological symptoms of parents and their children.

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Data Availability

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article are not publicly available due to personal owned but will be available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank all those who kindly volunteered to participate in the study.

Parental and Adolescents’ Anxiety during the COVID-19 Outbreak in Rural China: the moderating role of parent-child communication.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Number: 82173636) to JG.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Policy and Management, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Jing Guo, Sijia Guo & Ning Huang

  2. School of Public Management, Central South University, Changsha, 410082, PR China

    Mingqi Fu

  3. Department of Neurology and ICCTR Biostatistics and Research Design Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Bo Zhang

  4. Department of Public Administration, Beijing City University, Beijing, 100083, China

    Yiqing Wang

  5. School of Management, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, 100029, China

    Shuang Ma

  6. School of Social Development and Public Policy, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Xiaohua Wang

  7. Behavioral Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Madelon M. E. Riem

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Contributions

XW, SG, NH & JG drafted the manuscript, and analysis the data. MF, BZ, SG, YW, SM & MMER was involved in revising the manuscript. All authors were involved in writing the manuscript and approve of its final version.

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Correspondence to Xiaohua Wang.

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The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Beijing Normal University in March 2020 (Approval No.: SSDPP-HSC 2,020,003). After being informed about the survey’s aims, all participants gave informed consent and joined the study voluntarily. For adolescents, informed consent was obtained from their parents/legally authorized representatives. Relevant guidelines and regulations carried out all methods.

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Guo, J., Guo, S., Huang, N. et al. Parental and Adolescents’ Anxiety during the COVID-19 Outbreak in Rural China: The role of Parent-child Communication. Journ Child Adol Trauma (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40653-023-00609-y

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