Stressors, quality of the child-caregiver relationship, and children's mental health problems after parental death: the mediating role of self-system beliefs.
Investigated whether three self-system beliefs, fear of abandonment, coping efficacy, and self-esteem, mediated the relations of stressors and caregiver-child relationship quality with concurrent and prospective internalizing and externalizing problems in a sample of children who had experienced parental death in the previous 2.5 years. The cross-sectional sample consisted of 340 children ages 7-16 and their surviving parent/current caregiver; the longitudinal analyses employed a subset of this sample that consisted of 100 children and their parents/caregivers who were assessed at three time points. A multirater, multimethod measure of caregiver-child relationship quality and a multirater measure of children's mental health problems were used. The cross-sectional model supported a mediational relation for fear of abandonment, coping efficacy, and self-esteem. The three-wave longitudinal model showed that fear of abandonment at Time 2 mediated the relation between stressors at Time 1 and internalizing and externalizing problems at Time 3. Implications of these findings for understanding the development of mental health problems in parentally bereaved children and designing interventions for this at-risk group are discussed.
Wolchik
Sharlene A
SA
Prevention Research Center, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA. sharlene.wolchik@asu.edu
Tein
Jenn-Yun
JY
Sandler
Irwin N
IN
Ayers
Tim S
TS
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D001601:Bereavement; D002648:Child; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003643:Death; D005195:Family Relations; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D012649:Self Concept; D014481:United States