This project is designed to investigate the links between parental psychopathology, stressful life events, and the social-emotional adjustment of children at-risk. The analyses are based on data from families participating in the NIMH Childrearing Project (Z01 MH 02144), which includes children of parents with and without a history of affective disorder. Assessments of parental psychopathology are based on psychiatric (SADS-L) interviews with each parent. Stressful life events to which the children have been exposed are assessed on the basis of intensive, semi- structured interviews with mothers. Evaluations of children's functioning are based on psychiatric interviews, direct observations of their behavior in our laboratory apartment, and independent reports from their parents and teachers. In an initial set of analyses, characteristics of stressful events (e.g. nature, severity, timing, frequency, saturation) are coded without coders' knowledge of children's responses to the events. Events and characteristics of events that are caused, exacerbated, or buffered by parental functioning are distinguished. Associations between these subsets of stressful events and their characteristics to predictions of offspring adjustment will be examined.
