The Impact of Maternal and Paternal Communication Dominance on Offspring’s Negative Self-Talk, Depression, and Suicidality

• In Event: Family Communication: Dynamics and Effects on (Adult) Children

Abstract

General family functioning has been implicated in suicidality and a variety of adolescent suicide risk factors, such as depression. While some evidence exists that general family processes influence self-harm risk, much of this research focuses on family history of suicide or general family functioning constructs such as cohesion, conflict, or attachment with a paucity of research examining specific parent-offspring communicative interaction that facilitates this functioning. Parent-child communicative interaction is implicated in suicide risk, but often in very general terms such as "poor” or “unsatisfying” communication. More recently however, more specific parent-offspring interaction patterns such as parental psychological control and dominant-submissive parent-child communication have independently documented associations with depression and suicidality with different models for mothers and fathers. This study examines the impact of maternal and paternal communication dominance on offspring's suicidality, negative self-talk, and depression in a college sample (N = 252). The findings suggest that communication dominance of mothers and fathers increases the likelihood that individuals will suffer depression and engage in negative self-talk. Negative self-talk is the construct through which other factors affect suicidality. Depression did not directly predict suicidality when parental communication dominance is modeled as an exogenous construct.

Authors

• Michelle Miller-Day, Chapman U

• Sam Dorros, Chapman U

• L. Edward Day, Chapman U