Understanding Relationship Functioning, Depression, and Anxiety: Models of Risk and Protection in German and American Couples

• Applicant: Professorin Heather Foran, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: from 2011 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 193770452

Depression, one of the leading causes of global burden of disease, is not only associated with social and occupational impairment among the individual affected, but also can have detrimental impacts on children in the home. Thus, understanding risk and protective factors for parental depression that can inform prevention planning is needed. From a family systems perspective, adult mental health, child mental health, and both the marital and parent-child relationships can exert influence on the other. This project seeks to deepen scientific understanding of the interplay between mood symptoms and relationship problems using three longitudinal samples. In the first stage of the project, three archival samples will be used [one German 4-year longitudinal sample of 280 families (Future Families I), one American 2-year longitudinal sample of 453 families, and one American daily diary sample of 104 couples] to examine: a) risk for depressive symptoms given marital discord over 6 time points across 4 years, b) the role of the partner`s mood and behavior in depressive symptom changes over time, c) whether the impact of relationship problems on mood is specific to depression, anxiety, or general negative affect, d) protective factors that buffer risk for depression after marital problems, e) cross-cultural generalizability, and f) the role of marital conflict and stress on daily mood functioning of couples. In the second stage of the project, understanding of relationship problems and mood symptoms will be further explored and initial findings will be examined for replication over an even longer time period using a newly collected 10-year follow-up of the German sample (Future Families I) and a second newly collected 10-year longitudinal sample of socially disadvantaged German families (Future Families II). In addition, consistent with a family systems approach, the second stage of the project will include a systematic evaluation of the direct and indirect long-term effects of a parenting prevention trial on parental mood symptoms and relationship problems in the Future Families I sample followed for 10 years. Parenting conflict is one area that is associated with marital distress and thus, an intervention aimed at parenting may lead to reductions in marital distress and, in turn, depressive symptoms. Taken together, this project will lead to a better understanding of the connection between relationship problems and mood symptoms by identifying longitudinal risk and protective factors and intervention effects.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants