The COVID-19 pandemic, family stressors and the efficacy of brief family interventions

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, many questions remain about the specific stressors and the relative significance of these stressors for the everyday lives of children and families. Relatedly, an intriguing question about which even less is known is the impact of the pandemic on the efficacy of ongoing randomized clinical trials interventions designed to improve the well-being of children and families. In the present symposium, a first presentation documents pandemic related stressors for women exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) in the perinatal period and the impact of an intervention for IPV compared with an active control group on pandemic-related stressors. A second presentation describes sources of stress associated with the pandemic for families with infants, involving both mothers and fathers, and relations of pandemic-related stressors with pre-pandemic measures of parent mental health symptoms, parenting stress and competencies, and difficult infant behaviors. A third presentation documents sources of stress for maltreating mothers and their children and relations between pandemic-related stressors and the efficacy of an intervention for maltreatment families . In this case, the treatment condition concerned a Reminiscing and Emotion Training (RET; Valentino et al., 2019) intervention. Finally, the discussant will provide an integrative discussion of the findings regarding the most impactful pandemic-related stressors for children and families and consideration of positive and sometimes apparently negative effects on the relative efficacy of otherwise effective brief family-based interventions.

Sub Unit

• Prevention and Interventions

Chair

• E. Mark Cummings, University of Notre Dame

Individual Presentations

• Pandemic-related stress among women exposed to intimate partner violence in the perinatal period: Intervention effects and family relational experiences - Presenting Author: Laura Miller-Graff, University of Notre Dame; Non-Presenting Author: Kathryn H Howell, University of Memphis

• Infant Problem Behavior and Parenting Stress: Prospective Predictors of Parental Pandemic-Related Distress - Presenting Author: Julie M Braungart-Rieker, Colorado State University

• Maternal and child internalizing symptomatology during the COVID-19 pandemic among maltreating and nonmaltreating families - Presenting Author: Brigid M Behrens, University of Notre Dame; Non-Presenting Author: Katherine Edler, University of Notre Dame; Non-Presenting Author: Kreila E. Cote, University of Notre Dame; Non-Presenting Author: Kristin Valentino, University of Notre Dame