INTRODUCTION: Adolescents in residential care settings often face significant emotional and relational challenges related to prior experiences of adversity. Emotion regulation and the quality of relationships with professional caregivers are key factors in their psychological adjustment, and sex may play a role in how these processes develop. However, these associations have been little explored in residential care, particularly using longitudinal designs. This study examined whether the youth-caregiver relationship quality mediates the association between emotion regulation and psychological adjustment, and whether these associations differ between boys and girls in residential care. METHODS: = 15.55, SD = 1.67) from 21 Portuguese residential care facilities, followed over 20 months across three time points. A moderated mediation model through multigroup analysis by sex was tested, using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). RESULTS: A significant indirect effect was observed only among boys in residential care: lower emotion regulation at T1 predicted greater perceived relationship quality at T2, which predicted lower anger control problems at T3. A significant autoregressive effect was also found for boys, suggesting greater temporal stability in anger control problems compared to girls. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight the protective role of youth-caregiver relationships in residential care, particularly for boys' psychological adjustment. Even boys with emotion regulation difficulties can achieve more positive adjustment outcomes when supported by consistent and responsive caregiving relationships. These findings also underscore the importance of considering differences between boys and girls in understanding emotional and relational processes in residential care settings.
Santos et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: