Interparental conflict and adolescent emotional security across family structures.

This study investigated whether interparental conflict was differentially related to forms of emotional security (i.e., family, interparental, parent-child) and whether forms of emotional security were differentially associated with mental health problems for adolescents in married versus divorced/separated families. Participants were 1032 adolescents (ages 10-15; 51% male, 49% female; 82% non-Hispanic White, 9% Black/African American, 5% Hispanic, 2% Asian or Pacific Islander, 2% Native American) recruited from a public school in a middle-class suburb of a United States metropolitan area. We used multiple group multivariate path analysis to assess (1) associations between interparental conflict and multiple measures of emotional insecurity (i.e., family, interparental, and parent-child), (2) associations between measures of emotional insecurity and internalizing and externalizing problems, and (3) moderation effects of parent-child relationships. The patterns of association were similar across family structures. A high-quality parent-child relationship did not mitigate the harmful effects of interparental conflict on emotional insecurity or mental health problems. Findings suggest that regardless of family structure, emotional security across multiple family systems may be a critical target for intervention to prevent youth mental health problems, in addition to interventions that reduce conflict and improve parent-child relationships.

Preventing Adverse Outcomes for Bereaved Youth: Indirect Effects From a Randomized Trial of the Family Bereavement Program on Fear of Abandonment, Grief, and Mental Health.

OBJECTIVES: We investigated whether the self-system belief of fear of abandonment mediated the effects of intervention-induced change in 2 protective factors-positive parenting and adaptive coping-and one risk factor-stressful events-on youth mental health problems and maladaptive grief. This study extends prior research on fear of abandonment in youth who experience parental death by examining pathways through which a program reduced fear of abandonment and, in turn, affected subsequent pathways to child mental health problems in the context of a randomized experiment. METHODS: This is a secondary data analysis study. We used data from the 4-wave longitudinal 2-arm parallel randomized controlled trial of the Family Bereavement Program conducted between 1996 and 1999 in a large city in the Southwestern United States. The sample consisted of 244 offspring between 8 and 16 at the pretest. They were assessed again at posttest, 11-month follow-up, and 6-year follow-up. Offspring, caregivers, and teachers provided data. RESULTS: Mediation analyses indicated that intervention-induced reductions in stressful events were prospectively associated with a lower fear of abandonment. For girls, fear of abandonment was related to self-reported maladaptive grief and teacher-reported internalizing problems 6 years later. CONCLUSIONS: This study extends prior research on the relation between intervention-induced changes in risk and protective factors and improvements in outcomes of bereaved youth. The findings support the reduction of stressful events as a key proximal target of prevention programs for bereaved children.

Addressing a Mental Health Intervention Gap in Juvenile Detention: A Pilot Study.

Research suggests that 60-70% of adolescents detained in the juvenile justice system meet criteria for a mental health disorder compared to 20% of the general adolescent population; however, the vast majority do not receive services. Unfortunately, mental health symptoms often worsen during detainment, and detainment is linked to lower levels of educational attainment and increased risk of adult recidivism. Thus, not only are these adolescents unlikely to receive needed mental health care, but also the lack of interventions in detention may exacerbate inequities of contact with the criminal justice system in adulthood. In addition to these youth being an underserved population broadly, youth of color are also disproportionately incarcerated compared to their white counterparts. The current paper describes results of a pilot study of an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)-based behavioral skills intervention, aimed at providing evidence-based mental health treatment for an adolescent population at risk of long-term adverse mental health outcomes. The study included 128 males aged 14-17 who resided in juvenile detention. Results demonstrated that the intervention was acceptable to participants, feasible to provide in detention, and could be implemented with fidelity and competency. Intervention participants demonstrated declines in symptoms of mental health, and ACT-specific constructs of experiential avoidance, cognitive fusion, and perceived barriers to moving toward their values. These results have important implications for the possibility of an effective intervention that could disrupt systemic inequity in youth mental health, and thus support further testing of this intervention in a randomized controlled trial.

Effects of a preventive parenting intervention for bereaved families on the intergenerational transmission of parenting attitudes: Mediating processes.

This study evaluated whether the Family Bereavement Program (FBP), a prevention program for parentally bereaved families, improved parenting attitudes toward parental warmth and physical punishment in young adult offspring 15 years after participation and identified mediational cascade pathways. One hundred fifty-six parents and their 244 offspring participated. Data were collected at pretest (ages 8-16), posttest, and six- and 15-year follow-ups. Ethnicity of offspring was: 67% non-Hispanic Caucasian, 16% Hispanic, 7% African American, 3% Native American, 1% Asian or Pacific Islander, and 6% other; 54% were males. There was a direct effect of the FBP on attitudes toward physical punishment; offspring in the FBP had less favorable attitudes toward physical punishment. There were also indirect effects of the FBP on parenting attitudes. The results supported a cascade effects model in which intervention-induced improvements in parental warmth led to fewer externalizing problems in adolescence/emerging adulthood, which in turn led to less favorable attitudes toward physical punishment. In addition, intervention-induced improvements in parental warmth led to improvements in anxious romantic attachment in mid-to-late adolescence/emerging adulthood, which led to more favorable attitudes toward parental warmth in emerging/young adulthood. These findings suggest that the effects of relatively brief prevention programs may persist into subsequent generations.

Sleep Efficiency and Naturalistically-Observed Social Behavior Following Marital Separation: The Critical Role of Contact with an Ex-partner.

Marital disruption is associated with increased risk for a range of poor health outcomes, including disturbed sleep. This report examines trajectories of actigraphy-assessed sleep efficiency following marital separation as well as the extent to which daily social behaviors and individual differences in attachment explain variability in these trajectories over time. One hundred twenty-two recently-separated adults (N = 122) were followed longitudinally for three assessment periods over five months. To objectively assess daily social behaviors and sleep efficiency, participants wore the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) during the day (for one weekend at each assessment period) and an actiwatch at night (for seven days at each assessment period). Greater time spent with an ex-partner, as assessed by the EAR, was associated with decreased sleep efficiency between participants (p = .003). Higher attachment anxiety was also associated with decreased sleep efficiency (p = .03), as was the EAR-observed measure of "television on." The latter effect operated both between (p = .004) and within participants (p = .005). Finally, study timepoint moderated the association between EAR-observed measure of "television on" and sleep efficiency (p = .007). The current findings deepen our understanding of sleep disturbances following marital separation and point to contact with an ex-partner and time spent with the television on as behavioral markers of risk.

The Prospective Effects of Caregiver Parenting on Behavioral Health Outcomes for Children with Incarcerated Parents: a Family Resilience Perspective.

Rates of parental incarceration in the USA have increased dramatically over the past four decades. The Adverse Childhood Experiences study identified parental incarceration as one of several risk factors related to multiple health outcomes during childhood and adulthood. Parents and other caregivers are widely regarded as sources of resilience for children experiencing adversity, yet few studies have examined caregivers' parenting practices as sources of resilience for children with incarcerated parents. This study used secondary data from a longitudinal randomized controlled trial of the prison-based parent management training program Parenting Inside Out (PIO). Specifically, it included 149 caregivers (i.e., the non-incarcerated parent, extended family member, or other adult who provides the day-to-day caretaking of a child during parental incarceration) of children aged 2-14 years whose incarcerated parents were randomly assigned to receive PIO or the control condition. Path analysis was used to examine associations between caregivers' parenting, social support, self-efficacy, and change in child internalizing and externalizing symptoms across a 6-month period. Direct effects of caregivers' parenting were found on improvements in child behavioral health from baseline (conducted when the parent was incarcerated) to the 6-month follow-up (conducted after most parents had been released). Indirect effects were found for caregiver social support and self-efficacy. The findings highlight the importance of caregivers' adaptive parenting as a protective resource for children who experience parental incarceration and have implications for the design of preventive interventions for this underserved population.

Self-Compassion for Caregivers of Children in Parentally Bereaved Families: A Theoretical Model and Intervention Example.

Family-based bereavement interventions have shown promises to prevent problem outcomes and promote resilience in parentally bereaved children. Evidence of the broad range of mental and physical health problems following the death of a parent supports the need for a transdiagnostic approach that promotes adaptation and reduces multiple problem outcomes for parentally bereaved families. We discuss self-compassion as a promising framework for a transdiagnostic approach. We argue that three elements of self-compassion-mindfulness (vs. over-identification), self-kindness (vs. self-judgment), and common humanity (vs. isolation)-can facilitate loss-oriented coping, restoration-oriented coping, and the oscillation process between the two. This sets the foundation for individual and family processes that support bereavement adjustment. To explain how self-compassion promotes adjustment outcomes in parentally bereaved families, we review the extant literature with a focus on parental emotion regulation and effective parenting and propose a conceptual model with testable hypotheses to guide more research in this area. The model suggests that caregivers' self-compassion is a resilience resource for multiple adaptive outcomes for themselves and for their child through its positive impacts on emotion regulation and effective parenting. We illustrate the utility of the framework with an example of a family-based bereavement prevention program that integrated self-compassion training. Future directions for research are discussed.

Spinning Your Wheels: Psychological Overinvolvement and Actigraphy-Assessed Sleep Efficiency Following Marital Separation.

BACKGROUND: This study investigated the ways in which adults reflect on their psychological experiences amid a recent marital separation and how these patterns of thought, manifest in language, are associated with self-reported negative affect and actigraphy-assessed sleep disturbance. METHODS: In a sample of 138 recently separated adults assessed three times over five months, we examined within- and between-person associations among psychological overinvolvement (operationalized using verbal immediacy derived as a function of the language participants used to discuss their relationship history and divorce experience), continued attachment to an ex-partner, negative affect, and sleep efficiency. RESULTS: The association between psychological overinvolvement and negative affect operated at the within-person level, whereas the associations between psychological overinvolvement and sleep disturbance, as well as negative affect and sleep disturbance, operated at the between-person level. CONCLUSIONS: These findings shed light on the intraindividual processes that may explain why some people are more susceptible to poor outcomes after separation/divorce than others. Our findings suggest that individuals who express their divorce-related thoughts and feelings in a psychologically overinvolved manner may be at greatest risk for sleep disturbances after marital separation/divorce.

Preventing Mental Health Problems in Children After High Conflict Parental Separation/Divorce Study: An Optimization Randomized Controlled Trial Protocol.

Parental divorce is a childhood stressor that affects approximately 1.1 million children in the U.S. annually. The children at greatest risk for deleterious mental health consequences are those exposed to high interparental conflict (IPC) following the separation/divorce. Research shows that children's emotional security and coping efficacy mediate the impact of IPC on their mental health. Interventions targeting their adaptive coping in response to IPC events may bolster their emotional security and coping efficacy. However, existing coping interventions have not been tested with children exposed to high post-separation/divorce IPC, nor has any study assessed the effects of individual intervention components on children's coping with IPC and their mental health. This intensive longitudinal intervention study examines the mechanisms through which coping intervention components impact children's responses to interactions in interparental relationships. A 23 factorial experiment will assess whether, and to what extent, three candidate intervention components demonstrate main and interactive effects on children's coping and mental health. Children aged 9-12 (target N = 144) will be randomly assigned to one of eight combinations of three components with two levels each: (1) reappraisal (present vs. absent), (2) distraction (present vs. absent), (3) relaxation (present vs. absent). The primary outcomes are child-report emotional security and coping efficacy at one-month post-intervention. Secondary outcomes include internalizing and externalizing problems at the three-month follow-up. Based on data from this optimization phase RCT, intervention components will be selected to comprise a multi-component intervention and assessed for effectiveness in a subsequent evaluation phase RCT.

Enhancing Daily Affect in Youth Experiencing High-Conflict Parental Divorce: A Multiple Baseline Trial of an Online Prevention Program.

This study investigated the effects of a highly interactive, online cognitive-behavioral youth coping program: Children of Divorce-Coping with Divorce (CoD-CoD; Boring et al., 2015) on children exposed to high levels of interparental conflict (IPC). A multiple-baseline experimental design (N = 9) evaluated within-subject intervention effects on change in daily positive and negative affect before, during, and after the intervention (nobservations = 462). Participants were youth ages 11-16 who reported high exposure to IPC and whose parents had filed for divorce or parenting plan determinations in the prior year. A significant interaction effect indicated change in positive affect, but not negative affect, between the intervention and baseline phases. Positive affect linearly decreased during the baseline phase and flattened during the intervention phase. Results indicate that CoD-CoD was effective in interrupting a decline in youth-reported positive affect in a high-IPC sample, which may indicate a buffering effect against depression. Critical future directions include conducting large-scale randomized trials with children from high-IPC families to assess for whom the program is effective and assess long-term effects across a broad range of important outcomes.

Human-centered design methods to achieve preparation phase goals in the multiphase optimization strategy framework.

Background: The public health impact of behavioral and biobehavioral interventions to prevent and treat mental health and substance use problems hinges on developing methods to strategically maximize their effectiveness, affordability, scalability, and efficiency. Methods: The multiphase optimization strategy (MOST) is an innovative, principled framework that guides the development of multicomponent interventions. Each phase of MOST (Preparation, Optimization, Evaluation) has explicit goals and a range of appropriate research methods to achieve them. Methods for attaining Optimization and Evaluation phase goals are well-developed. However, methods used in the Preparation phase are often highly researcher-specific, and concrete ways to achieve Preparation phase goals are a priority area for further development. Results: We propose that the discover, design, build, and test (DDBT) framework provides a theory-driven and methods-rich roadmap for achieving the goals of the Preparation phase of MOST, including specifying the conceptual model, identifying and testing candidate intervention components, and defining the optimization objective. The DDBT framework capitalizes on strategies from the field of human-centered design and implementation science to drive its data collection methods. Conclusions: MOST and DDBT share many conceptual features, including an explicit focus on implementation determinants, being iterative and flexible, and designing interventions for the greatest public health impact. The proposed synthesized DDBT/MOST approach integrates DDBT into the Preparation phase of MOST thereby providing a framework for rigorous and efficient intervention development research to bolster the success of intervention optimization. Plain Language Summary: 1. What is already known about the topic? Optimizing behavioral interventions to balance effectiveness with affordability, scalability, and efficiency requires a significant investment in intervention development.2. What does this paper add? This paper provides a structured approach to integrating human-centered design principles into the Preparation phase of the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST).3. What are the implications for practice, research, or policy? The proposed synthesized model provides a framework for rigorous and efficient intervention development research in the Preparation phase of MOST that will ensure the success of intervention optimization and contribute to improving public health impact of mental health and substance use interventions.

Longitudinal Effects of PostDivorce Interparental Conflict on Children's Mental Health Problems Through Fear of Abandonment: Does Parenting Quality Play a Buffering Role?

In a sample of 559 children (ages 9-18), researchers investigated whether: (a) fear of abandonment mediated the association between postdivorce interparental conflict (IPC) and mental health problems, and (b) parent-child relationship quality moderated the association between IPC and fear of abandonment. Mediation analyses indicated that pretest IPC predicted fear of abandonment 3 months later, which then predicted child- and teacher-reported mental health problems 10 months later. The hypothesized protective effect of a high-quality parent-child relationship was not observed. IPC predicted fear of abandonment for all children, except for those with low- and moderate-quality father-child relationships, for whom IPC was not significantly related to fear of abandonment. Findings highlight the need to optimize child coping programs and improve parenting-after-divorce programs to reduce IPC.

The Development, Evaluation, and Implementation of Parenting-focused Prevention Programs in Collaboration with Family Court.

Promoting the well-being and best interests of children in separated and divorcing families is a shared value among family court professionals and prevention scientists who develop and evaluate intervention programs. This article chronicles the development, evaluation, and implementation of two programs - the New Beginnings Program (NBP), a parenting intervention for separated/divorcing parents and the Family Transitions Guide (FTG), an intervention designed to motivate high conflict separated/divorcing parents to attend the NBP. The development and evaluation of these programs was facilitated by a long-standing collaboration with Maricopa Family Court. We discuss the process of developing these programs, their underlying small theories, and the evaluation of their effects in randomized trials. We also describe our collaboration with the family court and ways that the court promoted the development and evaluation of these programs. Finally, we summarize lessons learned and discuss future directions to bolster the public health impact of evidence-based programs for separated/divorcing families.

Contact with an Ex-partner is Associated with Psychological Distress after Marital Separation.

This study examined the association between naturalistically-observed in-person contact with one's ex-partner and separation-related psychological distress (SRPD). 122 recently-separated adults were assessed using the Electronically Activated Recorder (Mehl, 2017) on three occasions across five months. The association between in-person contact with one's ex-partner, as a between-person variable, and concurrent SRPD was not reliably different from zero, nor was the time-varying effect of in-person contact. However, more frequent in-person contact with one's ex-partner predicted higher SRPD two months later, above and beyond the variance accounted for by concurrent in-person contact, demographic, relationship, and attachment factors. Follow-up analyses yielded that this effect was only present for people without children; a one standard deviation increase in in-person contact offset and slowed the predicted decline in SRPD over two months by 112%. Our discussion emphasizes new ways to think about the role of in-person contact in shaping adults' psychological adjustment to separation over time.

Understanding the perception of stakeholders in reducing adolescent-to-parent violence/aggression.

INTRODUCTION: Adolescent-to-parent violence/aggression (APV/A) is an understudied yet increasingly common social problem for adolescents and families, particularly those involved in the juvenile justice system. The current study focused on improving interventions for this population by gathering qualitative data from stakeholders to inform treatment targets. METHODS: Participants (N = 23) comprised of court professionals (n = 7), parents/guardians (n = 9), and their male adolescent children (n = 7) in the United States. Parent and adolescent participants were recruited through monthly court-mandated domestic violence education classes offered by the juvenile court. Parent/guardian participants were between the ages of 38 and 77 and consisted of four males and five females. Adolescents were between the ages of 14 and 17. Court professional participants consisted of judges, probation officers, and court psychologists. Semi-structured interviews were analyzed qualitatively using grounded theory. RESULTS: Results indicated that, from the perspective of key stakeholders, an effective intervention to reduce APV/A likely involves a two-pronged approach: (1) address specific and theoretically modifiable emotional, behavioral, and psychological factors at the adolescent-level; and (2) induce change in the family system by addressing environmental barriers to seeking treatment and by creating positive family relationships. CONCLUSIONS: The present study aimed to gather the perspectives of court professionals, adolescents, and parents/guardians regarding the development of an effective intervention for APV/A-involved families. This study represents the first step toward the development of a feasible, acceptable, sustainable, and effective intervention for adolescents and their families who are involved in the juvenile justice system due to APV/A.

Coping in context: The effects of long-term relations between interparental conflict and coping on the development of child psychopathology following parental divorce.

Exposure to high levels of postdivorce interparental conflict is a well-documented risk factor for the development of psychopathology, and there is strong evidence of a subpopulation of families for which conflict persists for many years after divorce. However, existing studies have not elucidated differential trajectories of conflict within families over time, nor have they assessed the risk posed by conflict trajectories for development of psychopathology or evaluated potential protective effects of children's coping to mitigate such risk. We used growth mixture modeling to identify longitudinal trajectories of child-reported conflict over a period of six to eight years following divorce in a sample of 240 children. We related the trajectories to children's mental health problems, substance use, and risky sexual behaviors and assessed how children's coping prospectively predicted psychopathology in the different conflict trajectories. We identified three distinct trajectories of conflict; youth in two high-conflict trajectories showed deleterious effects on measures of psychopathology at baseline and the six-year follow-up. We found both main effects of coping and coping by conflict trajectory interaction effects in predicting problem outcomes at the six-year follow-up. The study supports the notion that improving youth's general capacity to cope adaptively is a potentially modifiable protective factor for all children facing parental divorce and that children in families with high levels of postdivorce conflict are a particularly appropriate group to target for coping-focused preventive interventions.

Parenting time, parenting quality, interparental conflict, and mental health problems of children in high-conflict divorce.

Despite widespread acknowledgment that "frequent, continuing, and meaningful" (Pruett & DiFonzo, 2014) time with both parents is beneficial for children from divorced or separated families, and that interparental conflict (IPC) is associated with increased child mental health problems, the joint effects of parenting time (PT), parenting quality (PQ), and IPC on children's mental health problems are less clear. The current study integrates two theoretical models in multiple mediator analyses to test indirect effects of mothers' and fathers' PQ and IPC to explain the association between PT and children's mental health problems within the same model. Participants were children aged 9-18 years (N = 141) who had one or both parents participate in a randomized comparative effectiveness trial of a court-based prevention program for high-conflict divorcing or separating families. Data were collected at pretest and 9-month follow-up. Analyses revealed an indirect effect in which fathers' PQ mediated the association between PT and child internalizing problems both concurrently and 9 months later. There were no significant indirect effects involving IPC. Analyses indicated a significant quadratic relation between PT and fathers' PQ, suggesting that although more PT is associated with better father-child relationships, there is a point beyond which more time is not related to a better relationship. We discuss the study findings, research limitations, and implications for public policy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Multidisciplinary partnership: Targeting aggression and mental health problems of adolescents in detention.

Justice-involved adolescents meet diagnostic criteria for mental health disorders at much higher rates than their counterparts, and this increased risk persists into young adulthood (Abram et al., 2015; Teplin, Abram, McClelland, Dulcan, & Mericle, 2002). Despite growing recognition of this problem, there remains a dearth of adequate therapeutic services in juvenile detention and marked variation in the quality and availability of community-based services (Kretschmar, Butcher, Flannery, & Singer, 2016). This article presents the development of a multidisciplinary partnership among clinical research psychologists and court professionals to address aggressive behaviors and unmet mental health needs of adolescents in the juvenile justice system. We describe the early stages of collaboration, in which experts from disparate disciplines joined forces to address a mounting problem in the juvenile justice system that represented both a gap in the research-practice continuum and a lack of vital mental health resources in the local community. We delineate the team composition, outline key players' roles and contributions, and describe the principles that guided our collaboration across disciplines and agencies. We were effective in developing a sustainable multidisciplinary team, developing a new intervention, and implementing this new intervention in a challenging setting. The challenges we encountered throughout the process as well as the solutions that were generated and the lessons learned are discussed in detail. We discuss the substantive outcomes of our research and conclude with recommendations for readers interested in organizing similar academic-research/community partnerships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Does Shared Parenting Help or Hurt Children in High Conflict Divorced Families?

Despite a recent shift in the allocation of parenting time arrangements following divorce, there is no clear consensus regarding the effects of shared parenting on children's adjustment in high conflict families. We propose key questions and methodological options to increase the ability of results from well-designed empirical studies to inform practice and policy. We review eleven studies of the relations between parenting time and quality of parenting with children's adjustment in high conflict divorced families. Despite heterogeneity of the methods used across the studies some tentative conclusions can be made based on findings across multiple studies. Higher levels of shared parenting were related to poorer child adjustment in samples with high conflict many years following the divorce, but typically not in samples that assessed conflict during the divorcing process or in the two or three years following the divorce. There is also evidence that the effects of shared parenting on child adjustment in the presence of high conflict differs by gender, and that high quality of parenting by at least one parent is associated with better child adjustment in high conflict divorces. Implications for policy and practice are discussed as well as directions for research to strengthen the knowledge base to inform policy.

Preliminary evidence of attenuated blood pressure reactivity to acute stress in adults following a recent marital separation.

OBJECTIVE: This study explores cardiovascular reactivity during an acute-stress task in a sample of recently separated adults. DESIGN: In a cross-sectional design, we examined the association between adults' subjective separation-related distress and changes in heart rate and blood pressure across the acute-stress laboratory paradigm in a sample of 133 (n = 49 men) recently separated adults. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Heart rate (HR) and Blood pressure (BP) were recorded across a resting baseline period, a math stressor task, and a recovery period. RESULTS: Multilevel analyses revealed that adults who reported greater separation-related distress exhibited higher initial BP and a slower linear increase in BP across the study period. In addition, adults reporting greater separation-related distress evidenced significantly slower declines in diastolic blood pressure (DBP) following the acute-stress task. HR reactivity was not moderated by separation-related distress. CONCLUSIONS: In recently separated adults, preliminary evidence suggests that the context of the stressors may reveal differential patterns of problematic reactivity (exaggerated or blunted responding). Greater emotional intrusion and hyperactivity symptoms may index increased risk for blunted cardiovascular reactivity to general stressors. This pattern of reactivity is consistent with models of allostatic load that emphasise the deleterious effect of hyporesponsivity to environmental demands.