Key Questions Answered
Q: Does poverty amplify mental health problems between parents and children?
A: The study found no evidence that poverty strengthens the relationship between parental distress and child mental health issues.
Q: What was surprising about these findings?
A: Despite higher overall rates of mental health problems in low-income groups, poverty did not moderate the within-family dynamics of mental health.
Q: What do the results mean for interventions?
A: Mental health interventions should target all families, regardless of income, while still prioritizing prevention efforts in low-income contexts due to higher prevalence.
Summary: A large-scale longitudinal study challenges the assumption that poverty amplifies the link between parental distress and child mental health problems. Using advanced statistical modeling, researchers found that financial hardship did not influence the reciprocal relationship between parents’ and children’s mental health.
While mental health problems remain more common in low-income families, the underlying parent-child dynamics appear consistent across all income levels. These findings suggest mental health support should be universally accessible while still addressing socioeconomic disparities.
Key Facts:
- No Amplification Effect: Poverty did not moderate the relationship between parental and child mental health problems.
- Broad Sample: Data from over 10,000 children were analyzed across multiple developmental stages.
- Universal Impact: Parental mental health problems directly affect children, regardless of income.
Source: SWPS University
Can poverty exacerbate mental health problems among the youngest family members?
A new study by an international team, including a researcher from SWPS University, demonstrates that financial problems do not play a significant role, and mental health problems can occur regardless of a family’s financial situation.
Poverty, or the lack of sufficient financial resources to meet basic living needs, is widely recognized as a significant risk factor for children’s mental health problems. There is evidence that higher poverty levels are associated with greater conduct problems and depression.
In order to better understand this phenomenon, researchers have examined a variety of potential underlying psychological processes. According to the Family Stress Model (FSM), family stress and resulting parental mental health challenges reduce parenting efficacy, leading to child conduct problems.
Another theory – the Context of Stress model – is that poverty may amplify the influence of other risks on psychopathology. There are also studies that support the idea that there are interrelationships between parental and child mental health problems.
Does family income influence mental health?
“Children from lower income families are more likely to experience mental disorders, but it is unclear why. Most studies on the role of socioeconomic status in the relationship between child and parent mental health have certain methodological flaws.
“Research does not indicate whether family income (as a measure of poverty) affects the bidirectional relationship between parental mental health and child mental health.
“Addressing this gap in the literature is important because it will facilitate understanding the relationship between economic hardship and parental and child mental health problems,” explains psychologist Agata Dębowska, PhD, a professor at SWPS University, Faculty of Psychology in Warsaw, and co-author of the study.
Researchers from the University of Sheffield, Ankara University, Lancaster University, and SWPS University investigated the impact of low economic status on relations between parental distress and child psychopathology, at both between and within-family levels.
The researchers hypothesised that between and within-family reciprocal relations between parental distress and child mental health would be stronger for families in poverty than for families with higher income levels.
In addition, as some differences in developmental paths had been reported between boys and girls, models were fitted separately for each gender.
In the study, conducted using the advanced statistical method ALT-SR (Autoregressive latent trajectory modelling with structured residuals), the researchers used data from the longitudinal Millennium Cohort Study (2000-2002) conducted in the United Kingdom.
The data concerned the same group of children at ages 9 months, 3, 5, 7, 11, 14, and 17 years. A total of 10,309 individuals were included in the study: 5,161 females and 5,148 males.
Poverty does not affect parent-child relations in terms of mental health
Contrary to hypotheses based on the Context of Stress model, the study found that relations between parental distress and child psychopathology were not moderated by poverty at either between or within-family levels.
The results challenge existing beliefs suggesting that poverty amplifies the impact of parental distress on child mental health.
“These results contradict the concept that financial hardship depletes the resources of individuals to cope with other difficulties in their lives. In addition, our results are inconsistent with the results of the meta-analysis showing that the relations between maternal depression and child mental health problems are stronger in low-income families,” Dębowska says.
The researchers believe that a possible explanation for these discrepancies is the rigorous methodological approach applied in the new study. Furthermore, parental mental health problems may have a more direct and consistent impact on child mental health, for example, through diminished emotional availability, independent of dynamic external factors such as poverty.
Interventions for everyone
Clarifying the role of poverty in within-family mechanisms may lead to the development of more effective intervention strategies and support for families experiencing poverty.
There is still evidence that the prevalence of mental health problems is higher in low socioeconomic contexts, which is why prevention and treatment efforts should continue to prioritise low-income groups, the researchers emphasise.
They also point out that if the effect of parental distress is consistent irrespective of income level, then child mental health intervention targeting should be conducted across all socioeconomic strata.
The paper describing the study, titled “Does poverty moderate within-family relations between children’s and parents’ mental health?”, was published in Current Psychology. Its authors are Zeliha Ezgi Saribaz (University of Sheffield, Ankara University), Lydia Gabriela Speyer (Lancaster University), Paul Norman (University of Sheffield), Agata Dębowska (SWPS University) and Richard Rowe (University of Sheffield).
About this poverty, mental health, and neurodevelopment research news
Author: Marta Danowska-Kisiel
Source: SWPS University
Contact: Marta Danowska-Kisiel – SWPS University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Does poverty moderate within-family relations between children’s and parents’ mental health?” by Agata Debowska et al. Current Psychology
Abstract
Does poverty moderate within-family relations between children’s and parents’ mental health?
Children from lower income backgrounds are more vulnerable to psychopathology but it is unclear why.
One possibility is that poverty amplifies the effects of other risk factors, such as parental distress, on child mental health problems.
Previous relevant studies often had cross-sectional designs or relied on traditional cross-lagged panel designs, which have methodological drawbacks.
Designs that disentangle within- and between-family effects can provide more robust conclusions. To date, no studies have investigated the moderating role of poverty on the relationship between parental and child mental health using a within-family design.
This study investigates whether the between-and within-family relations between parental and child mental health differ between people living in poverty and those living in non-poverty.
Multigroup autoregressive latent trajectory models with structured residuals were fitted to analyse data collected at ages 3, 5, 7, 11, 14, and 17 from the Millennium Cohort Study; a representative sample of the UK population (N = 10, 309; ~ % 32 poverty).
Results indicated that relations between parental distress and child psychopathology were not moderated by poverty at either the between or within-family levels.
This study challenges models that indicate effects will be stronger in the context of poverty, such as the Context of Stress model.
Thus, findings suggest that policymakers should prioritize addressing associations between parental and child mental health problems across all poverty levels.
