Not to Worry? Parental Worry, Self-efficacy, and Parenting Behaviors in the Context of Adolescent Depression

Abstract Background & Objective Adolescent depression is impactful for adolescents and their parents. High parental worry and low parental self-efficacy may be rather prominent among parents with adolescents with depression, but how this is related to parenting behaviors, such as warmth and criticism, is not well known. Methods In a sample of 58 parents (M age = 50.10, SD age = 5.30) of 34 adolescents with depression (M age = 15.65, SD age = 1.54) and 151 parents (M age = 49.04, SD age = 5.87) of 80 healthy control adolescents (M age = 15.90, SD age = 1.35), 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. Results Parents of adolescents with depression reported higher levels of worry compared to the control sample, but equal levels of 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. Conclusions Parental worry, self-efficacy, parenting behaviors, and adolescent affect were interrelated with considerable differences between the control and depression samples. 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.