Not to Worry? The Relation between Parental Worry, Self-Efficacy, and Parenting Behaviors in the Context of Adolescent Depression

Adolescent depression is impactful for adolescents and for their parents. High worry and low self-efficacy may be rather prominent among parents with adolescents with depression, but how this may in turn have an effect on parenting behaviors, such as warmth and criticism, is not well known. In a healthy control (i.e, 80 adolescents, M_age = 15.90, SD_age = 1.35; 151 parents, M_age = 49.04, SD_age = 5.87) and depression sample (i.e., 34 adolescents with depression, M_age = 15.65, SD_age = 1.54; 58 parents, M_age = 50.10, SD_age = 5.30), we estimated Gaussian graphical network models on adolescent-reported affect states (i.e., happy, relaxed, sad, & irritated), adolescent- and parent-reported parenting behaviors (i.e., warmth, understanding, listening, criticism, dominance), and parent-reported parental worry and self-efficacy. Parents of adolescents with depression reported higher levels of worry, but not less self-efficacy. In both samples, parent-reported worry was positively related to adolescent-reported sadness and parent-reported parental criticism. Moreover, parent-reported self-efficacy was positively related to adolescent- and parent-reported parental warmth. Only in the depression sample, parent-reported worry was positively related to adolescent-reported parental warmth. Parental worry, self-efficacy, parenting behaviors and adolescent affect were interrelated with considerable differences between the control and depression sample. As a next step, studies with more intensive daily assessments may yield individual family analyses, while also accounting for contextual factors, to further increase our understanding of the relation between parental worry, self-efficacy and parenting behaviors in the context of adolescent depression.