Parenting and care: a complex role in the development of mental health
- PDF / 302,081 Bytes
- 3 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 11 Downloads / 168 Views
EDITORIAL
Parenting and care: a complex role in the development of mental health Anna Fuchs1,2 · Michael Kaess1,3 Published online: 1 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
The home environment children grow up in has been of particular interest in developmental psychopathology research due to its importance in interaction with and beyond genetic influences [1]. A healthy and well-functioning home environment supports children’s physical, psychological and socio-emotional development, whereas adverse home environments put children at risk for the development of psychiatric disorders. Most importantly, it is parents’ physiological, behavioral and emotional regulatory capacities that allow them to parent in a healthy way and support children’s normative development [2–4]. If parents’ regulation and positive parenting are compromised, for example due to a parent’s own history of trauma or parental mental disorder, children may not be provided with adequate environmental responses and tools they need for healthy development, which increases the risk for psychiatric disorders [5–8]. For example, experiences of deprivation and threat are both linked with higher levels of psychopathology and higher risk for a variety of psychiatric disorders [9, 10]. Further, higher household chaos and lower socioeconomic status have been associated with lower self-control and higher risk taking as well as poor mental health in children and youth [11, 12]. Interestingly, research further suggests that high-quality childcare matters more for children who come from disadvantaged home environments, demonstrating the compensatory or aggravating potential of out-of-home childcare [13]. Consequently, both home environment and outof-home care environments should be focused on in clinical * Anna Fuchs [email protected] 1
Centre for Psychosocial Medicine, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
2
Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
3
University Hospital of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
research to elucidate appropriate approaches to prevention and intervention. Research and debate thrive on challenging common assumptions. In this edition, two fairly common assumptions are challenged: First, it is often assumed that a parental history of mental illness should inevitably lead to mental health service utilization in offspring, and second, out-ofhome childcare is associated with higher levels of stress including higher cortisol levels in children. There are a significant number of studies showing that maternal mental disorders are linked with higher rates of disorders in children, with children’s psychiatric risk being at least twofold compared to children whose parents have no history of mental disorders [7]. Parental mental disorder further significantly predicts mental health service utilization [14]. Information about familial transmission of mental disorders rightfully inform
Data Loading...
