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Parental Anxiety and Child Symptomatology: An Examinzation of Additive and Interactive Effects of Parent Psychopathology

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An Erratum to this article was published on 10 September 2010

An Erratum to this article was published on 10 September 2010

Abstract

The current study examined relations between parent anxiety and child anxiety, depression, and externalizing symptoms. In addition, the study tested the additive and interactive effects of parent anxiety with parent depression and externalizing symptoms in relation to child symptoms. Forty-eight parents with anxiety disorders and 49 parents without any psychiatric disorder participated with one of their children (ages 6 to 14 years; 46.4% male; 75.8% Caucasian). Parent anxiety was related to both child anxiety and depression, but not child externalizing symptoms. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that only parent externalizing symptoms had additive effects, beyond parent anxiety symptoms, in relation to child anxiety symptoms. Further, parent anxiety symptoms moderated the relationship between parent and child externalizing symptoms, such that the strength of this relationship was reduced in the presence of high levels of parent anxiety symptoms. Results of this study illuminate the role of parent comorbidity in understanding relations between parent and child symptoms.

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Notes

  1. Notably, a number of studies involving community or clinically-referred youth have tested relations between parent psychopathology and child problems at the symptom rather than diagnostic level (e.g., Costa and Weems 2005; Costa et al. 2006). However, no studies of which we are aware have examined these relations in a high-risk design sample and none to our knowledge have examined the incremental contribution of different types of parent symptoms to relations between parent anxiety and child symptoms.

  2. All analyses involved participant data from the baseline assessment before involvement in the preventive intervention study.

  3. Many children with a psychiatric disorder had more than one diagnosis. As such, frequency counts are not mutually exclusive.

  4. Hierarchical linear regressions were also conducted without male parents. Because results were similar, they are presented for the entire sample.

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Author notes

  1. Marcy Burstein

    Present address: Section on Developmental Genetic Epidemiology, National Institute of Mental Health, 35 Convent Drive, Building 35, Room 1A104 (MSC 3720), Bethesda, MD, 20814, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, 21287-3325, USA

    Marcy Burstein & Golda S. Ginsburg

  2. Prevention Research Center, Arizona State University, Psychology North, Tempe, AZ, 85287-6005, USA

    Jenn-Yun Tein

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  1. Marcy Burstein
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  2. Golda S. Ginsburg
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Correspondence to Marcy Burstein.

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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10802-010-9455-5

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Burstein, M., Ginsburg, G.S. & Tein, JY. Parental Anxiety and Child Symptomatology: An Examinzation of Additive and Interactive Effects of Parent Psychopathology. J Abnorm Child Psychol 38, 897–909 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-010-9415-0

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