Poverty intensifies mental health problems for parents and children

Living in poverty for long stretches of time can intensify mental health issues in the family, a new study has found.

Published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, the study identifies the wellbeing of parents and children as being deeply interconnected, changing over time.

At younger ages, parents experiencing poorer mental health tend to have a negative impact on their children’s conduct, while behaviour problems of a child appear to adversely affect their parents’ mental health. Researchers found that as children grow older, their emotional symptoms tend to affect parental mental health.

Above all, the study highlights that poverty has the greatest adverse effect, intensifying mental health problems for both parents and children.

‘Regarding structural inequalities, the effect of poverty on parents’ and children’s mental health is categorically the largest and continues to accrue throughout the whole period, intensifying mental health problems for both parents and children over time,’ the study said. ‘Children and parents usually exist in the same family milieu and so face the same external stressors caused by structural inequalities: in this case, poverty and, especially, persistent poverty.’

Lead author, Professor Morag Treanor from the Institute for Social Policy, Housing, Equalities Research at Heriot-Watt University, said: ‘Our study shows that interventions attempting to improve children’s mental health not only need to address the wellbeing of parents simultaneously, but also tackle the profound negative effects of living in poverty, or else they will have limited success.’

The study argues for a comprehensive strategy for enhancing the mental health and wellbeing of families, with an emphasis on reducing poverty.

Co-author Dr Patricio Troncoso said: ‘We provide strong evidence of an interdependent relationship between parents’ and children’s mental health over time, which means that fostering the wellbeing of children and parents go hand-in-hand.’

The study looked at the interdependence of parental mental health and children’s emotional and conduct problems, along with the adverse effects of longitudinal poverty. Using the nationally representative birth cohort study Growing up in Scotland, key findings from the study indicate the influence, on each other and over time, of parental mental health and children’s emotional and conduct problems.

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