Effect and it's path of family environment, rearing style, and personality on adolescents with mental disorder

Abstract

Objective To investigate the comprehensive effect and impact path of family environment, rearing style and personality on adolescents with mental disorder. Methods A sample of 200 adolescents with mental disorders and 228 normal adolescents were tested with Family Environment Scale(FES-CV), Family Upbringing Style Questionnaire(FUSO), Big Five Personality Questionnaire(NEO-FFI-R) and Psychological Symptom Inventory-100(PSI-100). Regression analysis and path analysis were used to explore influence and path of rearing style, family environment and personality on mental health. Results The total score PSI-100 in case group (204.0±68.6) was higher than that in control group (146.9±38.4)(t=10.43, P<0.01). Regression analysis revealed that mental health was affected by rearing style (R2=0.208) such as mother supervision-control (β=-0.249), father understands-blame (β=-0.195), mother warmth-wildness (β=-0.228) and mother acceptance-rejection (β=0.201), family environment (R2=0.244) such as conflict (β=0.309), organization (β=-0.196) and expressiveness (β=-0.141), and personality traits (R2=0.452) such as neuroticism (β=0.412), agreeableness (β=-0.237) and conscientiousness (β=-0.203). Path Analysis showed that personality traits directly affected mental health (β=-0.90), parenting style indirectly influenced mental health (β=0.51) by personality, the family environment had direct (β=0.20) and indirect (β=0.72) effects on mental health, and the model fits well (χ2/df =2.160, RMSEA=0.052, GFI=0.88, AGFI=0.84, PGFI=0.67, NFI=0.91, RFI=0.89, IFI=0.95, TLI=0.94, CFI=0.95), and three factors explained 61% of variation on symptom total score. Conclusion The family environment, family upbringing style and personality traits have significant effect on the adolescent’s mental disorder.The personality traits are the most important variables affecting mental health family upbringing style affect mental health indirectly through personality traits, and family environment directly and indirectly affected on the mental health. Key words: Parenting style; Family environment; Personality traits; Mental health; Adolescents