Impacts of the Pandemic and the Bidirectional Relationship Between Maternal Anxiety, Depression and Children’s Mental Health: An Autoregressive cross-lagged panel model

• In Event: Factors affecting parenting during the Pandemic

Abstract

Introduction
Mothers and children have suffered mental health consequences due to COVID-19 (Lee et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020). Maternal and child mental health, however, appear to covary, making it challenging to tease apart the antecedent of this bidirectional relationship (Kuckertz et al., 2018). In cases of ongoing longitudinal research, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided a unique naturalistic experiment for the study of the effects of the pandemic on families. Accordingly, studies have been conducted on the psychological impacts of COVID-19 (Removed for review; Saleem et al., 2021). Collectively, these studies have found that the turmoil brought on by COVID-19 led to deterioration in child and maternal mental health. Limited research, however, has investigated the extent to which initial child and maternal mental health declines experienced at the onset of the pandemic have persisted (Burns et al., 2022).
Purpose of Study
The current study investigates the bi-directional effects of maternal mental health during COVID-19 and their children’s mental health. The specific research questions were: (1) How does children’s mental health across three-time points vary dynamically with maternal mental health just prior to and across the different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic; And (2) Do changes in children’s mental health challenges due to the pandemic, precede, follow, or co-occur with changes in maternal mental health (i.e., anxiety and depression)?
Methods
A total of 184 families completed assessments on their children’s mental health prior to and at three-time points (prior to COVID-19 (2016 - 2019), the initial onset of COVID-19 (2020-2021) and later during the pandemic (2021 - 2022). Families were low-income but somewhat highly educated compared to the general population in Toronto, Canada, where the current study took place. Children’s global mental health was assessed using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997) and maternal mental health was assessed using the Generalized Anxiety Score (GAD-2; Donker et al., 2011) and the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-2; Löwe et al., 2005). Autoregressive cross-lagged panel modeling was conducted with Mplus, version 8.0 (Muthen & Muthen, 2012-2021) and evaluated based on several model fit indices.
Results
Across all outcomes, the main effects revealed that earlier mental health positively predicted later mental health. The cross-lagged effect of maternal anxiety on subsequent children’s global mental health was only significant in children’s initial mental health response to COVID-19 (β =.459, SE = 07, p<.001), see figure 1. Only children’s global mental health at the start of COVID-19 predicted maternal anxiety at COVID-19 follow-up (β = .262, SE = 08, p<.01). The only significant cross-lagged effects between maternal depression and children’s global mental health were predicted by children’s global mental health on maternal depression at COVID-19 follow-up (β = .283 SE = .08, p<.001).
Discussion
The findings from this study show the complexities of the bidirectional impacts of familial mental health. The findings suggest that interventions must consider the family as a unit when supporting members within it and the duration of the pandemic, as family functioning may differ across time.

Authors

• Samantha Caitlin Burns, University of Toronto
  Presenting Author

• Calpanaa Jegatheeswaran, University of Toronto

• Zhangjing Luo, University of Toronto

• Michal Perlman, University of Toronto