Relationship between Self-Care Inquiry and Stress Levels In Adolescents with Substance Use Disorders

Adolescents living with substance use disorders are presented with a multitude of challenges when confronted with the reality of recovery from their addiction. Despite numerous interventions used to assist adolescents as they seek rehabilitation, few interventions focus on everyday stressors or triggers that contribute to substance use. Research has shown that stress significantly impacts substance use. This study aims to evaluate whether inquiring about self-care strategies used by adolescents seeking recovery from a substance use disorder will reduce stress levels, thus improving chances of adolescents maintaining recovery. Adolescents participating in outpatient treatment at a recovery facility were recruited for this study and were asked to fill out surveys once a week for four weeks about their level of stress and activities that they were doing for self-care.

Romantic relationships are a popular subject in the psychological research realm, but their social counterparts, singles, are overlooked. Further, whereas loneliness is well-studied, existential isolation (EI), the subjective sense that one is alone in one’s experience and that others cannot understand their perspective, is a construct that could provide insight to singles. Our research will examine single adults and how they might experience EI if they do not have single friends who can reasonably share their same experience (i.e., if most of them are in relationships). Single participants will estimate the proportion of their social circle (friends and family) who are single vs. in relationships. We predict that singles whose friends are mostly in romantic relationships will experience higher EI. On the other hand, we predict that single people with mostly single friends will not experience the same high level of EI. We will also measure EI in comparison to different well-being measures (e.g., self-esteem, happiness). It is hypothesized that singles will experience higher EI and lower well-being if most of their friends are not single.

Title: The Impact of COVID-19 on Mental Health and Marital Functioning in Mothers and Fathers of Autistic Children

Authors: Maddy Filippi, Deborah Rafferty, Naomi Ekas, Chrystyna Kouros

Introduction: Mothers and fathers of autistic children face many mental health and relationship challenges compared to parents of neurotypical children, including higher levels of stress (e.g., Benson, 2006; Weitlauf et al., 2014), more marital dysfunction (e.g., Shtayeermman et al., 2013; Sim et al., 2016), and increased likelihood of divorce (e.g., Hartley, 2010; Shtayermman, 2013). The sudden closure of schools and transitioning to online services at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic may have exacerbated the stress levels of parents with a disability, including negatively affecting various aspects of home life (Marchetti et al., 2020). The purpose of this study was to compare differences in marital relationship quality and psychological distress in mothers and fathers of autistic children at multiple points throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the mental health and marital satisfaction in mothers and fathers of autistic children were compared to population norms at all timepoints.

Methods: Mothers and fathers of autistic children who were part of a larger longitudinal study participated in a supplemental study examining the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. To qualify for the main study, parents had to be married or living together for a year, have an autistic child that lived with them 50% of the time, and be able to read and speak English. From the original sample of 119 couples, 94 mothers and 58 fathers answered surveys about their mental health (anxiety, stress, dysphoria), marital functioning (conflict and satisfaction), and the symptom severity of their autistic child at three time points (April, July, and October 2020) after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Results: A series of independent t-tests examined the differences between mothers’ and fathers’ reported levels of mental health, marital functioning, and child symptom severity. At all timepoints, mothers’ parenting responsibilities and anxiety levels were significantly higher than fathers’, ps ≤ .043. Mothers’ levels of stress and dysphoria were significantly higher in October 2020 than fathers’, ps ≤ .012. Compared to pre-pandemic population norms, mothers reported significantly higher stress at all timepoints (ps ≤ .006), while fathers only reported significantly higher levels of anxiety in April 2020 (p ≤ .001). Fathers also reported lower levels of dysphoria compared to population norms at all timepoints (ps ≤ .016).

Conclusion: As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, mothers of autistic children appeared to have more negative outcomes compared to fathers of autistic children. Mothers reported more parenting responsibilities compared to fathers, as well as higher rates of stress. In October 2020 when school districts re-opened, mothers reported higher levels of stress and dysphoria compared to fathers. Further, compared to pre-pandemic populations, parents of autistic children reported more stress and fathers reported reduced dysphoria. Overall, parents of autistic children appeared to face negative outcomes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and displayed higher rates of stress and dysphoria than parents at pre-pandemic populations. However, any conclusions generated from data reported by fathers are limited based on the reduced sample size.

References:

Benson, P. R. (2006). The impact of child symptom severity on depressed mood among parents of children with ASD: The mediating role of stress proliferation. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 36(5), 685-695.

Hartley, S. L., Barker, E. T., Seltzer, M. M., Floyd, F., Greenberg, J., Orsmond, G., & Bolt, D. (2010). The relative risk and timing of divorce in families of children with an autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Family Psychology, 24(4), 449–457. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019847
Marchetti, D., Fontanesi, L., Mazza, C., Di Giandomenico, S., Roma, P., & Verrocchio, M. C. (2020). Parenting-related exhaustion during the Italian COVID-19 lockdown. Journal of pediatric psychology, 45(10), 1114-1123.
Shtayermman, O. (2013). Stress and marital satisfaction of parents to children diagnosed with autism. Journal of family social work, 16(3), 243-259.

Sim, A., Cordier, R., Vaz, S., & Falkmer, T. (2016). Relationship satisfaction in couples raising a child with autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review of the literature. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 31, 30-52.

Weitlauf, A. S., Vehorn, A. C., Taylor, J. L., & Warren, Z. E. (2014). Relationship satisfaction, parenting stress, and depression in mothers of children with autism. Autism, 18(2), 194-198.

Abstract

Examining The Mediating Role of Self-Esteem on the Relationship Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Anxiety
Holli Fullbright, Michelle Coad, Lindsay Dills, Porter Maggiore
Texas Christian University, Fort Worth

Background: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are traumatic events during childhood that have lasting effects into adulthood, being associated with poorer health and psychosocial well-being. The present study investigates the relationship between ACEs, self-esteem, and anxiety among people with a history of justice involvement. We predicted that ACEs would be negatively correlated with self-esteem. Self-esteem, in turn, would be negatively correlated with anxiety.
Methods: Data were collected from 216 people with a self-reported history of substance use and justice-involvement using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants were required to be 18 years of age or older and fluent in the English language. Eligible participants who consented to participate in the study were asked to complete a 25-minute online survey and were compensated $1 for their time.
Results: Analyses revealed that more childhood adversity was significantly related to both higher anxiety and lower self-esteem. Further, self-esteem was significantly related to anxiety while controlling for ACEs. When self-esteem was included in the model, the relationship between ACEs and anxiety was no longer significant. In other words, self-esteem statistically mediated the relationship between childhood adversity and anxiety.
Conclusion: Findings indicate that self-esteem may be an important target for treatment among clients with histories of childhood adversity and anxiety. Self-esteem may serve as a protective factor against anxiety for clients who report a history of childhood abuse or neglect.

Past research has shown that individuals can think themselves into more extreme attitudes in the absence of learning new information about an attitude object (Tesser, 1978). Less is known, however, about whether certain types of thinking, or thought strategies, are more likely than others to make attitudes more extreme. The current study assessed whether and how a specific type of thought strategy—extrapolating beyond what is known about a social group’s personality traits—can make attitudes more extreme in the absence of new information. Participants first learned moderate trait information about two (fictitious) social groups and then self-generated extrapolations about one of the social group’s traits and reviewed the initial trait information for the second social group. Attitudes were more extreme toward the social group whose initial traits participants extrapolated than the social group whose initial traits participants reviewed. These findings extended past research and theory on the processes by which attitudes can become more extreme in the absence of new information.