ABSTRACT
Objective: This work aimed to analyze the role of family conflict on children's emotion regulation and stress outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic brought novel stress to families. The stress experienced could impact family relationships-specifically, perceptions of closeness and patterns of conflict. Positive family environment and high-quality family relationships are associated with adaptive coping and lower levels of stress among children. Method: Data were collected online from 110 participants at baseline and again 30 days later. Associations between parent-child relationship, sibling relationships, and child stress and emotion regulation outcomes 30 days later were tested through multiple stepwise regression. Results: Both significant regression models suggest that parent-child conflict is the strongest predictor of child stress and negativity over the 30-day assessment period. Sibling conflict predicted child stress but not negativity. Conclusion: Family conflict during the COVID-19 pandemic influenced children's emotion regulation outcomes as seen through significant associations between child-parent conflict, sibling conflict, perceived child stress, and children's negativity. Implications: Family scientists and practitioners should consider interventions that help parents teach their children how to cope with their own stresses and emotions after conflict.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic is linked to particularly potent psychological effects for children and their caregivers while families adjust to new daily routines for work, education, and self-care. Longitudinal associations are presented from a national sample of 271 parents (mean age = 35.29 years, 48.5% female) on resilience, mental health and stress indicators, and parenting outcomes. Multigroup path model results indicate significant associations between resilience and parent stress or parent perceived child stress initiates a sequence of significant linkages to parent depression, followed by caregiver burden and parent-child relationship quality. This final set of linkages between depression and both parenting outcomes were significantly stronger for men, who also reported higher rates of perceived child stress. Results suggest that fathers' depression symptoms and associated spill-over to perceived child stress is producing stronger effects on their parenting experiences than effects reported by mothers.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Adult , Female , Humans , Male , Mental Health , Pandemics , Parent-Child Relations , Parenting , Parents , SARS-CoV-2 , Stress, PsychologicalABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic and related quarantine orders will impact the mental health of millions of individuals in the United States. Mental health difficulties, including depression, anxiety, traumatic stress, and other negative mental health sequelae are likely and likely to persist. These challenges will require response from the psychotherapeutic and medical community that addresses the mental health needs of the population. Using binary logistic regression (n = 322 at time 1, and n = 189 at time 2), researchers in the present study examined promotive factors related to having sought medical or behavioral health treatment during a 30-day period in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Approximately 10% of the sample indicated having sought either type of help. Results from the binary logistic regressions indicated those who sought counseling or medical help were those who reported increased depression symptoms at time 1. The likelihood of help seeking was heightened for those who reported greater caregiving burden, highlighting the need to consider the availability of services for those caring for children during this community-wide crisis.
Subject(s)
Anxiety Disorders/psychology , COVID-19 , Depressive Disorder/psychology , Help-Seeking Behavior , Parents/psychology , Patient Acceptance of Health Care , Stress, Psychological/psychology , Adolescent , Adult , Anxiety/psychology , Child , Child, Preschool , Depression/psychology , Female , Humans , Infant , Infant, Newborn , Logistic Models , Male , Mental Health , Middle Aged , Pandemics , Patient Health Questionnaire , SARS-CoV-2 , Severity of Illness Index , Surveys and Questionnaires , United StatesABSTRACT
Scales assessing stressor exposure often fail to demonstrate adequate psychometric qualities, demonstrating low interitem reliability or complex factor structures, as would be expected, given that the majority of stressors are independent events. However, in large-scale mass crisis events, the stressors may be highly interrelated, indicating shared experience. Furthermore, few stressor exposure scales also measure appraised stressfulness of those stressors. Development of a psychometrically sound measure of both stressor exposure and appraisal advances the study of highly stressful events such as community-wide crises, especially in providing a useful measure of its cumulative stressfulness. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is an enduring, worldwide stressor with an indefinite timeline. The COVID-19 Stressor Scale is a 23-item measure of stressor exposure and appraisal related to the pandemic developed within the first weeks of widespread shelter-in-place practices in the Unites States. We present initial psychometric results of the COVID-19 Stressor Scale. Results of a principal components analysis indicate that the measure is unidimensional and has strong internal consistency. Evidence of convergent and discriminant validity were demonstrated. The COVID-19 Stressor Scale is a useful measure for studying the ongoing stressors associated with the pandemic and presents a model for measuring other massive, ongoing crises.