Family Interaction Styles of Children with Depressive Disorders, Schizophrenia‐Spectrum Disorders, and Normal Controls

Abstract

Family interaction processes during a problem-solving task were examined in children with depressive disorders, children with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, and a normal control group of community children screened for the absence of psychiatric disorder. Major findings were: a) children with depressive disorders were more likely than children with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and children with no psychiatric disorder to direct guilt-inducing comments toward their parents; and b) parents of children with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders were more likely to direct harsh critical comments toward the child than were parents of depressed children or parents of normal controls. In addition, children's and mothers' use of benign criticism was linked, while children's harsh criticism was associated with intrusion from the father, and children's self-denigrating comments were related to specific paternal criticism. Implications of these results for understanding transactional processes associated with childhood-onset depressive and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders are discussed.

Expressed emotion in families of children and adults with intellectual disabilities

“…Turning to childhood disorders, the proportion of parents coded as high in EE has been found to be higher in families where at least one of the children has a psychiatric disorder compared with nonclinical groups [Hibbs et al, 1991]. Similar associations have been found with a range of specific childhood mental and physical health disorders including asthma [Wamboldt et al, 2000], depression [Stein et al, 2000], schizophrenia [Hamilton et al, 1999], obsessive compulsive disorders [Steketee et al, 1998], ADHD [Daley et al, 2003], and eating disorders [Schmidt et al, 1997].…”

Psychological Distress, Substance Use, and HIV/STI Risk Behaviors Among Youth

“…Independent of substance use, mental distress may leave youth feeling alienated and isolated from family and peers (Donenberg & Pao, 2005; Hamilton, Asarnow, & Tompson, 1999), who then seek comfort in sexual partners as a method to reduce feelings of isolation and increase self-worth (Bachanas, Morris, Lewis-Gess, Sarett-Cuasay, Flores, et al, 2002). Potential reliance on partners to improve painful affect is concerning as the desire to avoid isolation and rejection by partners may result in risky sexual behavior as a way to maintain relationships (Donenberg & Pao, 2005; Lehrer et al, 2006).…”

Annotation: Childhood‐onset schizophrenia: clinical and treatment issues

“…The high probability that the observed discrepancies in parent behavior in the presence versus absence of the disturbed child is associated with the child's behavior/illness is further suggested by results of sequential analysis examining patterns of mother-child interaction in an early subset of the sample (Cook, Asarnow, Goldstein, Marshall & Weber, 1990). These analyses indicated that consistent with Hamilton et al's (1993) report of more harsh criticism among mothers of children with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, these mothers were also more likely than mothers of depressed children to respond to their child's negative verbal behavior with a reciprocal negative response. Whereas mothers of depressed children tended to respond less negatively following a negative child behavior, mothers of children with schizophrenia and schizotypal disorders tended to respond negatively after negative child behaviors.…”