Daily Dynamics of Parental Mental Health: Investigating Depressive Symptoms and Negative Parental Experiences

Background: Investigating psychopathological processes and how these are connected to psychiatric symptoms is important to understand how disorder states emerge and are maintained over time. Focusing on within-person relationships between variables further allows investigation of how these relations on average unfold within individuals. Methods: This preregistered intensive longitudinal study investigates connections between depressive symptoms, psychopathological processes, and negative parental experiences. Daily observations from 1036 parents were retrieved from two 40-day periods during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data was modelled using multilevel dynamic network analysis, unveiling across-day associations and contemporaneous interactions within the same time window. Results: On an across-day basis, helplessness was strongly interwoven with and predictive of the cognitive-affective features of depression and the other psychopathological processes. Being overwhelmed by the parental role (parenting stress) and emotionally drained as a parent (parental burnout) reciprocally reinforced each other from one day to the next, indicating how these components can manifest as a vicious loop over time. Finally, depressive symptomatology and negative parental experiences displayed within-day connections, with emotion regulation difficulties being connected to all parental components. Conclusions: The findings suggest that vicious cycles between helplessness and worthlessness predict the prolonged experience of depressed states in parents and that elevations in parenting stress and parental burnout reinforce each other over time.