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Published on: September 19, 2019
Harsh parental discipline, negative automatic thoughts, and depressive symptoms among Chinese children: Cross-lagged
Tingting Fu1, Jiaying Cheng2, Wan Ding2
1Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Intelligent Education Technology and Application; Zhejiang Philosophy and Social Science Laboratory for the Mental Health and Crisis Intervention of Children and Adolescents; School of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang 321004, China; School of Education, Guangxi Science & Technology Normal University, Laibin, Guangxi 546199, China.
Background:
Harsh parental discipline is a common form of child maltreatment and has been consistently associated with increased negative automatic thoughts and children's depressive symptoms. However, the longitudinal symptom-level associations of these factors remain unclear, particularly with respect to gender-specific patterns.
Objective:
This study employed a cross-lagged panel network analysis to examine the symptom-level temporal associations among harsh parental discipline, negative automatic thoughts, and depressive symptoms in children, and to investigate the role of gender in these relationships.
Participants And Setting:
Participants were 836 Chinese children recruited from three elementary schools. Children completed self-report questionnaires assessing harsh parental discipline, negative automatic thoughts, and depressive symptoms at two time points over a one-year interval.
Methods:
Cross-lagged panel network analysis was used to estimate temporal associations among the study variables, and network structures were compared between boys and girls.
Results:
The overall network analysis indicated that personal failure emerged as a central node connected to depressive symptoms. Paternal psychological aggression and paternal corporal punishment were both associated with personal failure, whereas maternal corporal punishment was linked to somatic symptoms and interpersonal relationship difficulties. Gender-specific network analyses revealed that depressive symptoms were primarily associated with paternal psychological aggression in girls and with personal failure in boys.
Conclusions:
Harsh parental discipline, negative automatic thoughts, and depressive symptoms exhibited complex associations with gender-specific patterns in the cross-lagged network, providing insights into the emergence and development of depressive symptoms in children.
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