Abstract
Feelings of alienation with parents and peers can lead to psychological distress, possibly because such feelings are stressful. Supportive siblings are known to foster mental health in youth, but research in emerging adulthood is limited. We hypothesized supportive sibling climate as a protective factor in the risks that stress from parent and peer alienation poses to psychological distress among emerging adults. A proposed moderated-mediation model was tested, across three samples, using latent moderated mediation structural equation modeling. Results indicated that parental and peer alienation were associated with more psychological distress, and stress partially mediated the link between parental (but not peer) alienation and psychological distress in two samples. However, a supportive sibling climate was not protective as it did not moderate the links among alienation, stress, and psychological distress. In sum, siblings seem beneficial, but perhaps it is not sufficient to protect emerging adults’ mental health against stress from parent and peer alienation.
Highlights
Feelings of alienation with parents and peers can lead to psychological distress, possibly because such feelings are stressful
These three mechanisms can be further adapted to the study of siblings by using a developmental psychopathology approach, which involves identifying risk factors associated with negative outcomes and the underlying promotive and protective processes that can attenuate the effect of a risk factor on individual functioning (Cicchetti & Rogosch, 2002)
The measurement model tested the factorial structure of the 20 items of this study, using a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with robust maximum likelihood estimator (MLR)
Summary
Feelings of alienation with parents and peers can lead to psychological distress, possibly because such feelings are stressful. Social support is associated with improved mental health through three mechanisms: (a) a main effect of support on mental health, regardless of levels of risk or stress (ST); (b) a main effect of support on mental health in the presence of risk; and (c) a buffering effect of support in the presence of risk (Cohen & Wills, 1985; Cohen et al, 2000; Gariepy et al, 2016) These three mechanisms can be further adapted to the study of siblings by using a developmental psychopathology approach, which involves identifying risk factors associated with negative outcomes and the underlying promotive and protective processes that can attenuate the effect of a risk factor on individual functioning (Cicchetti & Rogosch, 2002). The third, which is an alternative model, is a promotive model, in which sibling support in itself is a promotive factor that directly reduces a negative outcome, namely PD (Zimmerman, 2013)
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