Family Conflicts, Sleep and Mental Health in Chinese Adolescents

The influence of family relationships extends significantly and enduringly in shaping the development of adolescents. Previous literature had a family environment scale (FES) to measure family relationships and conflicts. However, the FES did not measure conversation or work-life balance conflicts and it remains unclear whether these additional dimensions of family conflicts were associated with sleep and mental health issues in adolescents. We developed a new family conflict questionnaire with these two dimensions through semi-structural interviews and examined the relationships between family conflicts and sleep and mental health problems in sixty-five students in Beijing, China. We found that particularly in boys, elevated family conflicts in terms of conversation and work-life balance, were associated with more sleep and mental health issues including general anxiety. These findings suggest sex differences in the associations and future studies may investigate the causal relationships with a longitudinal design.