Parental Knowledge/Monitoring and Depressive Symptoms During Adolescence: Protective Factor or Spurious Association?

ABSTRACT: Parental knowledge/monitoring is negatively associated with adolescents' depressive symptoms, suggesting monitoring could be a target for prevention and treatment. However, no study has rigorously addressed the possibility that this association is spurious, leaving the clinical and etiological implications unclear. The goal of this study was to conduct a more rigorous test of whether knowledge/monitoring is causally related to depressive symptoms. 7940 youth (ages 10.5-15.6 years, 49% female) at 21 sites across the U.S. completed measures of parental knowledge/monitoring and their own depressive symptoms at four waves 11-22 weeks apart during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, monitoring and depression were examined in standard, between-family regression models. Second, within-family changes in

SUBMITTER: Pelham WE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8777180 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature