Family Functioning and Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Problems: Disentangling between-, and Within-Family...

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Family Studies
• Adolescent Mental Health

Background:

• Adolescence is a critical period for the onset of internalizing and externalizing problems.
• Adolescent development involves increasing autonomy and changes in family dynamics.
• Existing research lacks examination of within-family processes linking family functioning to adolescent problems.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the longitudinal, within-family associations between family functioning and adolescent internalizing/externalizing problems.
• To differentiate between-family and within-family effects using advanced statistical modeling.
• To clarify the directionality of effects between family functioning and adolescent mental health.

Main Methods:

• Longitudinal, pre-registered, open-science study with Greek adolescents (N=480).
• Self-report questionnaires administered three times over 12 months.
• Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models (RI-CLPM) and standard Cross-Lagged Panel Models (CLPM) were employed.

Main Results:

• Family functioning was not significantly associated with internalizing or externalizing problems on the within-family level.
• Standard CLPM indicated that adolescents with higher internalizing and externalizing problems tended to experience worse family functioning later.
• The reverse association (family functioning predicting adolescent problems) was not supported on the within-family level.

Conclusions:

• Within-family processes do not appear to drive the link between family functioning and adolescent psychopathology.
• Adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems may precede and negatively impact family functioning.
• Findings have implications for understanding adolescent mental health and family interventions.