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Schedule:
Friday, January 13, 2017
Bissonet (New Orleans Marriott)
* noted as presenting author
Background and Purpose: Research on child mental health in Ukraine is virtually non-existent. Consistent with prior research in countries with developed economies (e.g., Chassin, Pitts, DeLucia, & Todd, 1999; Christie-Mizell, Pryor, & Grossman, 2008; McLeod, Weisz, & Wood, 2007; Tearne et al., 2016), we hypothesized that children internalizing behavior will be positively associated with mother younger age, lower income and education, more frequent alcohol use, and higher depression, lower use of positive parenting and involvement with their children and higher use of poor monitoring, inconsistent discipline and corporal punishment.
Methods: The study used a community-based sample of mothers and children ages 9-16 (n = 251). The youth reports of internalizing behaviors were assessed using Youth Self-Report (YSR; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001). The Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (Frick, 1991) was used to examine parenting. Parents also reported on their age, level of education, national identity, marital status, and child’s age. Depression was assessed with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Questionnaire (CES-D; Radloff, 1977). The Alcohol Use Section of the Drinking and Drug History and Current Use Patterns questionnaire (Zucker, Fitzgerald, & Noll, 1990) was used to estimate maternal alcohol use with multilevel mixed-effects linear modeling (MLM) approach.
Results: In this study, 11% of girls and 8% of boys were in the clinical range (T score = 63 or above; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001) for internalizing behavior problems. Results suggested that childhood internalizing problems decreased as child’s age increased (β=-.77, p <.01), with less symptoms experienced by males (β=-2.22, p <.05). Additionally, children had more internalizing symptoms if their mothers were of older age (β=.25, p <.05), had higher depression (β=.39, p <.001), and had lower scores on use of positive parenting techniques (β=-2.80, p <.05). Family income, maternal education, and frequency of drinking had no effect on childhood depression scores. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for the outcome variable revealed that 4.4% of child internalizing behaviors, 95% CI [.006, .25], was found between participating neighborhoods.
Conclusions and Implications: This study begins to fill a gap in the global social work knowledge about child mental health in with developing countries economies. The results suggest that child risk for internalizing symptoms is related to such child characteristics as female sex and younger age as well as to mother-level factors, including maternal depression, lower use of positive parenting, and older age. This is one of the first comprehensive studies of parenting and internalizing behaviors among Ukrainian families. The present study is significant for policy makers, social work researchers, practitioners and students because it continues to raise awareness of importance of paying attention to child environments while trying to address children mental health problems. These results have the potential to improve learners’ abilities to utilize global perspectives in their education and training in clinical social work at multiple system levels and to increase understanding of factors that may contribute to child wellbeing and mental heath in lower-income countries.
Methods: The study used a community-based sample of mothers and children ages 9-16 (n = 251). The youth reports of internalizing behaviors were assessed using Youth Self-Report (YSR; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001). The Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (Frick, 1991) was used to examine parenting. Parents also reported on their age, level of education, national identity, marital status, and child’s age. Depression was assessed with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Questionnaire (CES-D; Radloff, 1977). The Alcohol Use Section of the Drinking and Drug History and Current Use Patterns questionnaire (Zucker, Fitzgerald, & Noll, 1990) was used to estimate maternal alcohol use with multilevel mixed-effects linear modeling (MLM) approach.
Results: In this study, 11% of girls and 8% of boys were in the clinical range (T score = 63 or above; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001) for internalizing behavior problems. Results suggested that childhood internalizing problems decreased as child’s age increased (β=-.77, p <.01), with less symptoms experienced by males (β=-2.22, p <.05). Additionally, children had more internalizing symptoms if their mothers were of older age (β=.25, p <.05), had higher depression (β=.39, p <.001), and had lower scores on use of positive parenting techniques (β=-2.80, p <.05). Family income, maternal education, and frequency of drinking had no effect on childhood depression scores. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for the outcome variable revealed that 4.4% of child internalizing behaviors, 95% CI [.006, .25], was found between participating neighborhoods.
Conclusions and Implications: This study begins to fill a gap in the global social work knowledge about child mental health in with developing countries economies. The results suggest that child risk for internalizing symptoms is related to such child characteristics as female sex and younger age as well as to mother-level factors, including maternal depression, lower use of positive parenting, and older age. This is one of the first comprehensive studies of parenting and internalizing behaviors among Ukrainian families. The present study is significant for policy makers, social work researchers, practitioners and students because it continues to raise awareness of importance of paying attention to child environments while trying to address children mental health problems. These results have the potential to improve learners’ abilities to utilize global perspectives in their education and training in clinical social work at multiple system levels and to increase understanding of factors that may contribute to child wellbeing and mental heath in lower-income countries.