Maladaptive Coping and Violence Justification Link Emotional Distress and Child-to-Parent Violence

What is it about?

This study looked at why some teenagers act violently toward their parents and how their emotional struggles, like anxiety or depressive symptoms, link to this situations. We followed almost 900 teenagers over several months to see how their emotions and actions were connected. We found that teens with emotional distress were more likely to show violent behavior toward their parents. This link was stronger for teens who used maladaptive ways to cope with their problems (such as rumination or wishful thinking) or believed violence was okay in certain situations. We also discovered that emotional distress and violence could influence each other over time, with these maladaptive coping ways playing a big role in keeping this cycle going.

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Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash

Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash

Why is it important?

These findings highlight the importance of helping teens learn better coping strategies and challenge harmful beliefs about violence to prevent this kind of behavior, and also to break the unhealthy emotional cycle. This is important because it follows a different way of thinking about the phenomenon. Thanks to the results of this study, we can see how violent behaviors that adolescents show towards their parents may be attempts to deal with emotional distress in a wrong way. Adolescents, in turn, may also be vulnerable to their own behaviors, making them victims of their own behaviors.

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