Internalizing problems in children and adolescents cause substantial hardship and enduring distress, such as later substance abuse and suicide among youth. Although children of substance abusing parents are at increased risk for internalizing problems relative to their same-age counterparts, not all of these children develop such problems. Very little is known about the specific predisposing factors and the psychosocial mechanisms that lead to these outcomes in children of substance abusing parents. Likewise, parent and child gender have not yet been considered in tandem as potential qualifiers of these risks. Accordingly, the proposed research attempts to examine the specificity of risk for anxiety and affective problems, the role of parenting as a potential mediator of this risk, and parent and child gender as moderators of the risk for internalizing problems in substance abusing families. A series of multi-informant models will allow the examination of each research question, while controlling for the correlations that emerge among anxiety and effective problems. Further, this research will provide critical direction in preventing internalizing problems among children of substance abusers, in turn, forestalling substance abuse problems in future generations.
| Burstein, Marcy; Stanger, Catherine; Dumenci, Levent (2012) Relations between parent psychopathology, family functioning, and adolescent problems in substance-abusing families: disaggregating the effects of parent gender. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 43:631-47 |
| Burstein, Marcy; Stanger, Catherine; Kamon, Jody et al. (2006) Parent psychopathology, parenting, and child internalizing problems in substance-abusing families. Psychol Addict Behav 20:97-106 |
