Poster #27 - Familial Stress and Parental Depression in the First Five Years of Life are Associated with Increased Anxiety Symptoms in Children

• In Event: Poster Session 03

Abstract

Background: Existing data link exposure to stressful events, parental psychopathology, and parental neuroticism with anxiety symptoms in school-aged children and adolescents. Longitudinal research in early life that identifies the most salient parental factors (i.e., in multifactorial models) associated with child anxiety symptoms is more limited. The current study aimed to address this gap, considering the role of familial stressors, parental anxiety symptoms, parental depressive symptoms, and parental neuroticism assessed early in life on child anxiety symptoms assessed at age 5.
Methods: 778 families drawn from the community were enrolled in a longitudinal study of the development of emotion processing and assessed in infancy, and at 2 years, 3 years, and 5 years. The following measures were administered to parents (a majority of the respondents were the mother of the child): the Revised Life Events Questionnaire (all visits, measure of familial stressors), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (infancy through 3 years, measure of parental anxiety symptoms), Beck Depression Inventory (infancy through 3 years, measure of parental depressive symptoms), NEO Five-Factor Inventory (infancy, measure of parental personality, including neuroticism), and Child Behavior Checklist (at 5 years, parent report of child emotional and behavioral problems, including anxiety symptoms). Linear mixed models (LMMs) were used in analyses.
Results: In an LMM, parental depressive symptoms from infancy through 3 years (t=2.491, p=.013) were associated with child anxiety symptoms; other fixed effects modeled (familiar stressors, parental anxiety symptoms, and parental neuroticism) were not associated with child anxiety symptoms. In a LMM testing for interaction effects between familial stressors and parental psychological factors on child anxiety, the interaction term familial stressors (infancy to 5 years) x parental depressive symptoms (infancy to 3 years) was significant (t=2.987, p=.003); no other interaction term was significant.
Conclusions: Greater parental depressive symptoms (from infancy through 3 years) were consistently associated with higher child anxiety symptoms at age 5 years. Moreover, parental depressive symptoms interacted with familial stressors to predict child anxiety symptoms. That is, a greater number of depressive symptoms and familial stressors interact to predict child anxiety symptoms far beyond the contribution of each. These findings suggest that, in the first five years of life, parental depressive symptoms as well as family stressors may be particularly salient factors in the development of child anxiety symptoms.

Authors

• Viviane Valdes, Emory University
  Presenting Author

• Charles A. Nelson, Harvard Medical School

• Linda Craighead, Emory University

• Michelle Bosquet Enlow, Boston Children's Hospital