Relationship of parental rearing styles and the correlative factors with the mental health of medical students

Weina MA

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:

Parental rearing styles has profound and long-range effects on the mental development of their children.

OBJECTIVE:

To investigate the relationship between parental rearing styles and its correlative factors and the mental health of medical students.

DESIGN:

A transactional survey study based on medical students.

SETTING:

Department of psychology in a clinical medical college of a normal school.

PARTICIPANTS:

The study was conducted in the faculty of medicine of Hangzhou Normal School in December 2002. Totally 165 students of grade 2000-2002 including 106 college students, 59 undergraduates, and 98males, 67 females were selected as subjects. The youngest was 19 years old and the oldest was 24 years old. Totally 161 students had both parents (97.60%), 4 students had single parent (2.40%), 53 students were the only child of their family (32. 10%), and 112 students were not the only child of the family (67.90%).

METHODS:

Egna minnen barndoms uppfostran(EMBU) and symptom checklist 90(SCL-90) was introduced to evaluate the parental rearing styles and the mental health level in 165 medical students. SPSS 10.0 software was used for correlation analysis and multifactor stepwise regression analysis.MAIN OUTCOME

MEASURES:

Scores for 11 factors in EMBU including father' s emotional warmth and understanding, father' s punishment and stringency, father' s excessive interference, father' s favoritism, father' s rejection of deny, father' s excessive protection, mother' s emotional warmth and understanding, mother' s excessive interference, mother' s excessive protection, mother' s punishment and stringency, and mother' s favoritism, and the selection status of the factors correlated with the parental rearing styles including the relationship between father and mother, family income, and family type, etc. Total mean and scores for 9 factors in SCL-90 including somatization, obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paraniod ideation and psychoticism.

RESULTS:

Correlation analysis displayed that there was significant positive correlation between father' s punishment and stringency and somatization,sensitive human relationship(r=0. 186, r=0. 162), between mother' s punishment and stringency and sensitive human relationship( r =0. 185),between father' s favoritism and obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paraniod ideation and psychoticism factor and total mean( r = 0. 161, 0. 243, 0. 224, 0. 182,0. 166, 0. 193), between mother' s favoritism and depression( r=0.132),between father' s excessive protection and depression, anxiety, and total mean( r = 0. 177, 0. 204, 0. 162), and between mother's rejection of deny and sensitive human relationship( r = 0. 162) . There was significant negative correlation between father' s emotional warmth and anxiety, hostile ( r =-0. 187,-0. 241 ). As indicated by multifactor stepwise regression analysis for the impacts of parental rearing styles and its correlative factors on SCL-90 total mean, rearing styles including mother' s education background and father' s excessive protection entered into regression equation (β= -0. 269, P =0. 001; β=-0. 187, P=0. 016).

CONCLUSION:

Parents' punishment and stringency, parents' favoritism, father' s excessive protection and mother' s rejection of deny are not good for the mental health of medical students. Father' s emotional warmth is good for the improvement of mental health in medical students. The impacts of father' s excessive protection and mother' s education background are even more important to the mental health of medical students. Hence, the improvement of mental health in students should extend to the instruction of parental rearing styles.