Depression and Anxiety in Parents of Children With ADHD and Varying Levels of Oppositional Defiant Behaviors: Modeling Relationships With Family Functioning

This study investigated the relation between parental anxiety and family functioning. Parental anxiety and depression, child attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) symptoms were all included as predictors of 3 measures of family functioning to examine the independent contributions of each. Using a self-report battery completed by 45 mother-father pairs, 3 family functioning factors were derived: Parental Warmth and Positive Involvement, Intrusiveness and Negative Discipline, and Social Distress. Multilevel modeling simultaneously estimated the unique contributions of parental and child symptoms on family functioning. Results indicated that parental anxiety was negatively associated with Parental Warmth and Positive Involvement, Intrusiveness and Negative Discipline, and Social Distress; parental depression was only negatively associated with Social Distress. Child ODD symptoms had independent associations with all outcomes; no relations were found with ADHD. Sex moderated the effects of parental anxiety on Parental Warmth and Positive Involvement such that only for mothers did greater anxiety lead to less Parental Warmth and Positive Involvement.