Day-to-day changes in parent emotions predict adolescent mental health problems

What is it about?

Are parents' day-to-day changes in emotions related to adolescent psychopathology? This article examines how parent and adolescent emotional variability (i.e., daily emotion fluctuations) is linked to adolescents' psychological symptoms three months later. Our study shows that adolescents reported increased internalizing problems and depressive symptoms when their parents had more variable negative emotions, above and beyond adolescents' own emotions. Also, female adolescents reported increased internalizing problems when their parents showed more variable positive emotions.

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Photo by Jessica Rockowitz on Unsplash

Photo by Jessica Rockowitz on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The findings of this study suggest the importance of assessing family emotion dynamics to better understand the development of adolescent psychopathology.