IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v16y2019i24p5153-d298790.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Depression and Anxiety Symptoms of British Adoptive Parents: A Prospective Four-Wave Longitudinal Study

Author

Listed:
  • Rebecca E. Anthony

    (Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement (DECIPHer), School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, 1-3 Museum Place, Cardiff CF10 3BD, UK)

  • Amy L. Paine

    (School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Tower Building, 70 Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3BD, UK)

  • Katherine H. Shelton

    (School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Tower Building, 70 Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3BD, UK)

Abstract

The mental health of birth parents has gained attention due to the serious negative consequences for personal, family, and child outcomes, but depression and anxiety in adoptive parents remains under-recognized. Using a prospective, longitudinal design, we investigated anxiety and depression symptoms in 96 British adoptive parents over four time points in the first four years of an adoptive placement. Depression and anxiety symptom scores were relatively stable across time. Growth curve analysis showed that higher child internalizing scores and lower parental sense of competency at five months post-placement were associated with higher initial levels of parental depressive symptoms. Lower parental sense of competency was also associated with higher initial levels of parental anxiety symptoms. Parents of older children and those with higher levels of parental anxiety and sense of competency at five months post-placement had a steeper decrease in depressive symptoms over time. Support for adoptive families primarily focuses on child adjustment. Our findings suggest that professional awareness of parental mental health post-placement may be necessary, and interventions aimed at improving parents’ sense of competency may be beneficial.

Suggested Citation

  • Rebecca E. Anthony & Amy L. Paine & Katherine H. Shelton, 2019. "Depression and Anxiety Symptoms of British Adoptive Parents: A Prospective Four-Wave Longitudinal Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(24), pages 1-14, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:24:p:5153-:d:298790
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/24/5153/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/24/5153/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McKay, Katherine & Ross, Lori E., 2010. "The transition to adoptive parenthood: A pilot study of parents adopting in Ontario, Canada," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 604-610, April.
    2. Rebecca E. Anthony & Amy L. Paine & Katherine H. Shelton, 2019. "Adverse Childhood Experiences of Children Adopted from Care: The Importance of Adoptive Parental Warmth for Future Child Adjustment," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(12), pages 1-16, June.
    3. P. Diggle & M. G. Kenward, 1994. "Informative Drop‐Out in Longitudinal Data Analysis," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 43(1), pages 49-73, March.
    4. Hegar, Rebecca L., 2005. "Sibling placement in foster care and adoption: An overview of international research," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(7), pages 717-739, July.
    5. Anthony, Rebecca & Meakings, Sarah & Doughty, Julie & Ottaway, Heather & Holland, Sally & Shelton, Katherine H., 2016. "Factors affecting adoption in Wales: Predictors of variation in time between entry to care and adoptive placement," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 184-190.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lasio, Diego & Chessa, Silvia & Chistolini, Marco & Lampis, Jessica & Serri, Francesco, 2021. "Expecting an already born child: Prospective adoptive parents’ expectations in intercountry adoption," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    2. O'Dell, Keely E. & McCall, Robert B. & Groark, Christina J., 2015. "Supporting families throughout the international special needs adoption process," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 161-170.
    3. David M. Murray & Jonathan L. Blitstein, 2003. "Methods To Reduce The Impact Of Intraclass Correlation In Group-Randomized Trials," Evaluation Review, , vol. 27(1), pages 79-103, February.
    4. Patrick E. B. FitzGerald, 2002. "Extended Generalized Estimating Equations for Binary Familial Data with Incomplete Families," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 58(4), pages 718-726, December.
    5. Pourahmadi, Mohsen & Daniels, Michael J. & Park, Trevor, 2007. "Simultaneous modelling of the Cholesky decomposition of several covariance matrices," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 98(3), pages 568-587, March.
    6. E. Michael Foster & Grace Y. Fang, 2004. "Alternative Methods for Handling Attrition," Evaluation Review, , vol. 28(5), pages 434-464, October.
    7. Mette Ejrnæs & Anders Holm, 2006. "Comparing Fixed Effects and Covariance Structure Estimators for Panel Data," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 35(1), pages 61-83, August.
    8. Miran A. Jaffa & Ayad A. Jaffa, 2019. "A Likelihood-Based Approach with Shared Latent Random Parameters for the Longitudinal Binary and Informative Censoring Processes," Statistics in Biosciences, Springer;International Chinese Statistical Association, vol. 11(3), pages 597-613, December.
    9. Shu Xu & Shelley A. Blozis, 2011. "Sensitivity Analysis of Mixed Models for Incomplete Longitudinal Data," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 36(2), pages 237-256, April.
    10. Bian, Yuan & Yi, Grace Y. & He, Wenqing, 2024. "A unified framework of analyzing missing data and variable selection using regularized likelihood," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    11. Lars Relund Nielsen & Erik Jørgensen & Søren Højsgaard, 2011. "Embedding a state space model into a Markov decision process," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 190(1), pages 289-309, October.
    12. Jennifer Chan & Wai Wan, 2011. "Bayesian approach to analysing longitudinal bivariate binary data with informative dropout," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 121-144, March.
    13. Jayajit Chakraborty & Timothy W. Collins & Sara E. Grineski & Alejandra Maldonado, 2017. "Racial Differences in Perceptions of Air Pollution Health Risk: Does Environmental Exposure Matter?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(2), pages 1-16, January.
    14. Zhixiong Zhou & Shanshan Dong & Jun Yin & Quan Fu & Hong Ren & Zenong Yin, 2018. "Improving Physical Fitness and Cognitive Functions in Middle School Students: Study Protocol for the Chinese Childhood Health, Activity and Motor Performance Study (Chinese CHAMPS)," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-15, May.
    15. Sotto, Cristina & Beunckens, Caroline & Molenberghs, Geert & Kenward, Michael G., 2011. "MCMC-based estimation methods for continuous longitudinal data with non-random (non)-monotone missingness," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 301-311, January.
    16. Herbster, Julia M. & Ocasio, Kerrie, 2021. "The complex relationship between sibling contact and child and family well-being in foster care: An exploration of child and family functioning in a pre-permanency cohort," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    17. Yu Cao & Nitai D. Mukhopadhyay, 2021. "Statistical Modeling of Longitudinal Data with Non-Ignorable Non-Monotone Missingness with Semiparametric Bayesian and Machine Learning Components," Sankhya B: The Indian Journal of Statistics, Springer;Indian Statistical Institute, vol. 83(1), pages 152-169, May.
    18. Webster, Daniel & Shlonsky, Aron & Shaw, Terry & Brookhart, M. Alan, 2005. "The ties that bind II: Reunification for siblings in out-of-home care using a statistical technique for examining non-independent observations," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(7), pages 765-782, July.
    19. Kenneth A. Bollen & Patrick J. Curran, 2004. "Autoregressive Latent Trajectory (ALT) Models A Synthesis of Two Traditions," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 32(3), pages 336-383, February.
    20. Jokinen, Jukka, 2006. "Fast estimation algorithm for likelihood-based analysis of repeated categorical responses," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 1509-1522, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:24:p:5153-:d:298790. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.