Parenting and Family-related Protective Factors for Adolescents at High Risk for Depression and Suicide

Adolescence is marked by increases in stress and the onset of stress-related mental health disorders. There is variability in outcomes after stress exposure, which is likely influenced by a variety of factors, including parental and familial characteristics that may serve to mitigate the harmful effects of stress. This dissertation includes studies to examine how parents play a regulatory role in helping their adolescents cope with stress. The studies are drawn from two at-risk samples: one at high risk for depression, and one at high risk for suicidal behavior. The first study examines whether parents and family help to buffer the neuroendocrine stress response in adolescents who have participated in a controlled laboratory stress task. We found that the perception of parent and family support was related to neuroendocrine regulation, but not the presence of the parent. The second study explores parental and familial factors that may help to mitigate the association between stressful life events in the past year and internalizing symptoms in adolescents. We found that stress exposure was related to internalizing symptoms but that parent and family factors did not buffer this association. The third study characterizes levels of parental caregiving stress for parents of hospitalized youth across three months post-discharge, explores factors associated with caregiving stress, and explores the impact of caregiving stress on the parental ability to support their teen post-discharge. We found that caregiving stress declined over time, that risk and protective factors influence this decline, and that both stress and self-efficacy were related to increases in support post-discharge. In sum, this dissertation highlights the, sometimes limited, role of parents in helping their teens regulate.PhDPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/174464/1/vjfoster_1.pd