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Children who experience parental death are at increased risk for suicide. The Family Bereavement Program (FBP) is an upstream preventive intervention for parentally bereaved families that was found to reduce suicide risk in parentally bereaved youth up to 6 and 15 years later. We tested whether FBP-induced improvements in effective parenting led to changes in multiple proximal factors that prior theory and research implicated in the cascading pathway to suicide risk, namely, aversive self-views, caregiver connectedness, peer connectedness, complicated grief, depressive symptoms, and emotion suppression. The sample was 244 bereaved youth and their surviving caregiver from 156 families. Families were randomized into the FBP (12 group-based sessions for parents, youth, and two joint sessions) or a literature control condition. Multimethod and multiinformant data were collected at baseline, posttest, 6-year and 15-year follow-up assessments. Results showed that program-induced improvements in effective parenting at posttest were associated with reduced aversive self-views and increased caregiver connectedness at the 6-year follow-up, and each mediator was in turn associated with reduced suicide risk at the 6- and 15-year follow-up. The mediated pathways via aversive self-views remained significant while controlling for caregiver connectedness. Self-related concepts may be important targets in upstream suicide prevention for at-risk youth.

This study evaluated whether the Family Bereavement Program (FBP), a prevention program for parentally bereaved families, improved parenting attitudes toward parental warmth and physical punishment in young adult offspring 15 years after participation and identified mediational cascade pathways. One hundred fifty-six parents and their 244 offspring participated. Data were collected at pretest (ages 8–16), posttest, and six- and 15-year follow-ups. Ethnicity of offspring was: 67% non-Hispanic Caucasian, 16% Hispanic, 7% African American, 3% Native American, 1% Asian or Pacific Islander, and 6% other; 54% were males. There was a direct effect of the FBP on attitudes toward physical punishment; offspring in the FBP had less favorable attitudes toward physical punishment. There were also indirect effects of the FBP on parenting attitudes. The results supported a cascade effects model in which intervention-induced improvements in parental warmth led to fewer externalizing problems in adolescence/emerging adulthood, which in turn led to less favorable attitudes toward physical punishment. In addition, intervention-induced improvements in parental warmth led to improvements in anxious romantic attachment in mid-to-late adolescence/emerging adulthood, which led to more favorable attitudes toward parental warmth in emerging/young adulthood. These findings suggest that the effects of relatively brief prevention programs may persist into subsequent generations.

Exposure to high levels of postdivorce interparental conflict is a well-documented risk factor for the development of psychopathology, and there is strong evidence of a subpopulation of families for which conflict persists for many years after divorce. However, existing studies have not elucidated differential trajectories of conflict within families over time, nor have they assessed the risk posed by conflict trajectories for development of psychopathology or evaluated potential protective effects of children's coping to mitigate such risk. We used growth mixture modeling to identify longitudinal trajectories of child-reported conflict over a period of six to eight years following divorce in a sample of 240 children. We related the trajectories to children's mental health problems, substance use, and risky sexual behaviors and assessed how children's coping prospectively predicted psychopathology in the different conflict trajectories. We identified three distinct trajectories of conflict; youth in two high-conflict trajectories showed deleterious effects on measures of psychopathology at baseline and the six-year follow-up. We found both main effects of coping and coping by conflict trajectory interaction effects in predicting problem outcomes at the six-year follow-up. The study supports the notion that improving youth's general capacity to cope adaptively is a potentially modifiable protective factor for all children facing parental divorce and that children in families with high levels of postdivorce conflict are a particularly appropriate group to target for coping-focused preventive interventions.

Scarce research has examined stress responsivity among Latino youths, and no studies have focused on the role of acculturation in shaping cortisol stress response in this population. This study assessed Mexican American adolescents’ Mexican and Anglo cultural orientations and examined prospective associations between their patterns of bicultural orientation and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal cortisol reactivity to an adapted Trier Social Stress Test. The sample included 264 youths from a longitudinal birth cohort study who completed the Trier Social Stress Test and provided saliva samples at age 14. The youths completed assessments of cultural orientation at age 12, and family conflict and familism at age 14. Analyses testing the interactive effects of Anglo and Mexican orientation showed significant associations with cortisol responsivity, including the reactivity slope, peak levels, and recovery, but these associations were not mediated by family conflict nor familism values. Findings revealed that bicultural youth (high on both Anglo and Mexican orientations) showed an expected pattern of high cortisol responsivity, which may be adaptive in the context of a strong acute stressor, whereas individuals endorsing only high levels of Anglo orientation had a blunted cortisol response. Findings are discussed in relation to research on biculturalism and the trade-offs and potential recalibration of a contextually responsive hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis for acculturating adolescents.

This study examined the effects of a family-based intervention Coping and Promoting Strength (CAPS) relative to a control condition, information-monitoring (IM), to prevent the onset of anxiety disorders in offspring of anxious parents six years after their initial assessment. One hundred thirty six families participated in the original randomized trial; 113 (83%) completed the one time follow-up assessment. Presence of anxiety disorders and severity of symptoms in offspring were assessed by masked evaluators using the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule; parents and offspring also completed questionnaires assessing offspring anxiety. Using the intention to treat sample from the original trial, Cox regression models showed significant intervention main effects in the rate of onset of anxiety disorders from baseline to follow-up (anxiety disorder: hazard ratio (HR) = 2.55, 95% CI: 1.54, 4.21) but growth curves suggest effects occurred within the first year after program completion. No group differences were found in the cumulative incidence of anxiety disorders at the six-year follow-up. Additional intervention appears needed to maintain the initial positive effects long-term to reduce the risk for downstream disability.Clinical Trials Registration: NCT00847561

Growth mixture modeling with a sample of 749 Mexican heritage families identified parallel trajectories of adolescents’ and their mothers’ heritage cultural values and parallel trajectories of adolescents’ and their fathers’ heritage cultural values from Grades 5 to 10. Parallel trajectory profiles were then used to test cultural gap-distress theory that predicts increased parent–adolescent conflict and adolescent psychopathology over time when adolescents become less aligned with Mexican heritage values compared to their parents. Six similar parallel profiles were identified for the mother–youth and father–youth dyads, but only one of the six was consistent with the hypothesized problem gap pattern in which adolescents’ values were declining over time to become more discrepant from their parents. When compared to families in the other trajectory groups as a whole, mothers in the mother–adolescent problem gap trajectory group reported higher levels of mother–adolescent conflict in the 10th grade that accounted for subsequent increases in internalizing and externalizing symptoms assessed in 12th grade. Although the findings provided some support for cultural gap-distress predictions, they were not replicated with adolescent report of conflict nor with the father–adolescent trajectory group analyses. Exploratory pairwise comparisons between all six mother–adolescent trajectory groups revealed additional differences that qualified and extended these findings.

This study examined the mediated effect of early adolescence familial context on early adulthood problematic substance use through effortful control in late adolescence. The sample consisted of a community sample of 311 adolescents and their families comprising the control group within a randomized trial intervention. Parental monitoring and parent–child relationship quality (P-C RQ) were measured annually from ages 11 to 13. Effortful control was measured by self-reports and parent and teacher reports at ages 16 to 17. Self-reports of problematic tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use were measured at ages 18 to 19, 21 to 22, 23 to 24, and 26 to 27. Structural equation modeling was employed to test hypothesized models. Only P-C RQ was found to be significantly associated with adolescent effortful control. As expected, higher levels of adolescent effortful control were associated with lower problematic substance use through early adulthood, controlling for previous substance use levels. Mediation analyses showed that effortful control significantly mediated the relationship between P-C RQ and problematic substance use. Higher relationship quality between youth and parents in early adolescence is associated with higher effortful control, which in turn relates to a lower level of problematic substance use in early adulthood.

This 15-year longitudinal follow-up of a randomized controlled trial of a parenting-focused preventive intervention for divorced families examined cascade models of program effects on offsprings’ competence. It was hypothesized that intervention-induced improvements in parenting would lead to better academic, work, peer, and romantic competence in emerging adulthood through effects on behavior problems and competencies during adolescence. Families ( N = 240) participated in the 11-session program or literature control condition when children were ages 9–12. Data were drawn from assessments at pretest, posttest, and follow-ups at 3 and 6 months and 6 and 15 years. Results showed that initial intervention effects of parenting on externalizing problems in adolescence cascaded to work outcomes in adulthood. Parenting effects also directly impacted work success. For work outcomes and peer competence, intervention effects were moderated by initial risk level; the program had greater effects on youths with higher risk at program entry. In addition, intervention effects on parenting led to fewer externalizing problems that in turn cascaded to better academic outcomes, which showed continuity into emerging adulthood. Results highlight the potential for intervention effects of the New Beginnings Program to cascade over time to affect adult competence in multiple domains, particularly for high-risk youths.

Twin factor mixture modeling was used to identify temperament profiles while simultaneously estimating a latent factor model for each profile with a sample of 787 twin pairs (Mage = 7.4 years, SD = .84; 49% female; 88.3% Caucasian), using mother-and father-reported temperament. A four-profile, one-factor model fit the data well. Profiles included \"regulated, typical reactive,\" \"well-regulated, positive reactive,\" \"regulated, surgent,\" and \"dysregulated, negative reactive.\" All profiles were heritable, with lower heritability and shared environment also contributing to membership in the \"regulated, typical reactive\" and \"dysregulated, negative reactive\" profiles.

This study reports on the findings from a 6-year follow-up of a randomized trial of the Family Bereavement Program (FBP) on the outcomes for spousally bereaved parents. Spousally bereaved parents (N = 131) participated in the trial in which they were randomly assigned to receive the FBP (N = 72) or literature control (N = 59). Parents were assessed at four time points: pretest, posttest, and 11-month and 6-year follow-up. They reported on mental health problems, grief, and parenting at all four time periods. At the 6-year follow-up, parents reported on additional measures of persistent complex bereavement disorder, alcohol abuse problems, and coping efficacy. Bereaved parents in the FBP as compared to those in the literature control had lower levels of symptoms of depression, general psychiatric distress, prolonged grief, and alcohol problems, and higher coping efficacy (for mothers) at the 6-year follow-up. Multiple characteristics of the parent (e.g., gender, age, and baseline mental health problems) and of the spousal death (e.g., cause of death) were tested as moderators of program effects on each outcome, but only 3 of 45 tests of moderation were significant. Latent growth modeling found that the effects of the FBP on depression, psychiatric distress, and grief occurred immediately following program participation and were maintained over 6 years. Mediation analysis found that improvement in positive parenting partially mediated program effects to reduce depression and psychiatric distress, but had an indirect effect to higher levels of grief at the 6-year follow-up. Mediation analysis also found that improved parenting at the 6-year follow-up was partially mediated by program effects to reduce depression and that program effects to increase coping efficacy at the 6-year follow-up was partially mediated through reduced depression and grief and improved parenting. FBP reduced mental health problems, prolonged grief, and alcohol abuse, and increased coping efficacy of spousally bereaved parents 6 years later. Mediation pathways for program effects differed across outcomes at the 6-year follow-up.