Level of social-cognitive development, adaptive functioning, and DSM-III diagnoses in adolescent offspring of parents with affective disorders: Implications of the development of the capacity for mutuality.

Abstract

This study examines the relation between the developmental social-cognitive capacity for interpersonal negotiation and both parental-risk and adolescent-outcome variables in 172 adolescents 11 to 19 years of age. The sample was divided into two groups: those at risk because of affective disorder in one or both of their parents and a comparison group whose parents have never experienced affective illness. Adolescents' interpersonal negotiation strategy (INS) levels were negatively associated with the duration of parental affective illness (and with associated lower socioeconomic status and marital discord). INS level significantly predicted adolescents' adaptive social functioning (AFR) even after controlling for age, sex, intelligence, number of adolescent diagnoses, and parental-risk factors. Two additioaal patterns were found in the risk group: adolescents with both high AFR and high INS, and adolescents who have disturbed functioning despite high INS, These findings are consistent with a risk model in which social-cognitive capacity mediates between parental disorder and adaptive child behavior, and they suggest the importance of assessing children at risk with a developmental measure of relational capacity to complement the more traditional diagnostic and behavioral outcome measures.