(PS11-A10) Parental Psychopathology Affects Behavior in Children with ADHD: The Mediating Role of Parental Cognitive Distortions and Parenting Behaviors

Parental psychopathology has well-documented adverse effects on children’s behavior, yet the underlying mechanisms of this relationship remain understudied. This is especially relevant to parents of children with ADHD, as greater rates of psychopathology are observed within this population relative to parents of typically developing children. Parenting behaviors have been implicated as a potential mechanism; however, little research has examined how parental psychopathology affects parenting and child outcomes. Parents’ distorted thinking (i.e., cognitive errors), which reflect overly negative, stable, and helpless beliefs that parents hold toward their child’s behavior and their own parenting practices, is one unexplored mechanism. Parental cognitive errors have shown relations to harsh parenting and are highly prevalent among parents with depression, anxiety, and ADHD. It is hypothesized that parental psychopathology may affect parents’ cognitive errors and parenting behavior among parents of children with ADHD, and that this collective mediational effect may impact child behavior; however, this notion has yet to be tested.

Data were collected as part of a larger, randomized controlled trial of a behavioral intervention for children with ADHD (n=199; Age M = 8.6, SD = 1.2; 58% boys). Only baseline data were considered for the present study. Cognitive errors were assessed using the Parent Cognitive Error Questionnaire (PCEQ), which assesses erroneous attributions of child behavior and parenting self-efficacy. Measures also included parental depression/anxiety and ADHD from the Adult Self Report, parenting behaviors (i.e., inconsistent discipline, corporal punishment, and positive parenting) from the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire, and child externalizing behaviors from the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC-2). Separate serial mediation models were run for each combination of parental psychopathology and parenting behavior mediators. A similar pattern emerged regardless of the parent psychopathology considered. The indirect effect assessing Cognitive Errors and Inconsistent Discipline and modeled serially significantly mediated the relation between parental psychopathology and child externalizing behaviors (ADHD: B = .01, CI = .003 to .03; Depression/Anxiety: B = .03, CI = .01 to .07). Path inspection indicated that greater parental cognitive errors was associated with increased inconsistent discipline, which was collectively associated with increased child externalizing behaviors. A similar pattern was found for Corporal Punishment (ADHD: B = .01, CI = .002 to .03; Depression/Anxiety: B = .02, CI = .003 to .06). No mediational relationship was found in the models that examined Positive Parenting (ADHD: B = -.002, CI = -.007 to .003; Depression/Anxiety: B = -.003, CI = -.01 to .005).

These findings suggest that parenting interventions that focus on improving both parental cognitions and parenting behaviors may provide the most success in improving children’s externalizing behaviors. Encouragingly, positive parenting behaviors may be robust against the negative effects of parental psychopathology.