Abstract
BackgroundEven though child psychopathology assessment guidelines emphasize comprehensive multi-method, multimodal, and multi-informant methodologies, maternal-report symptom-rating scales often serve as the predominant source of information. Research has shown that parental mood symptomatology affects their reports of their offspring’s psychopathology. For example, the depression-distortion hypothesis suggests that maternal depression promotes a negative bias in mothers’ perceptions of their children’s behavioral and emotional problems. We investigated this difference of perception between adoptive mothers and internationally adopted children. Most previous studies suffer from the potential bias caused by the fact that parents and children share genetic risks.MethodsData were derived from the Finnish Adoption (FinAdo) survey study (a subsample of adopted children aged between 9 and 12 years, n = 222). The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) was used to assess emotional and behavioral problems and competences of the adopted children. The CBCL was filled in by the adopted children and the adoptive mothers, respectively. Maternal depressive symptoms were measured using the short version of the General Health Questionnaire.ResultsOn average, mothers reported less total CBCL symptoms in their children than the children themselves (0.25 vs 0.38, p-value < 0.01 for difference). Mothers’ depressive symptoms moderated the discrepancy in reporting internalizing symptoms (β = − 0.14 and p-value 0.01 for interaction) and the total symptoms scores (β = − 0.22 and p-value < 0.001 for interaction) and externalizing symptoms in girls in the CBCL.LimitationsThe major limitation of our study is its cross-sectional design and the fact that we only collected data in the form of questionnaires.ConclusionsThe results of our research support the depression-distortion hypothesis concerning the association of maternal depressive symptoms and child internalizing symptoms and externalizing symptoms in girls in a sample without genetic bias
Highlights
In the assessment of emotional and behavioral psychiatric symptoms in children, the procedure of collecting and combining information from multiple sources, e.g. mother, father, therapist, teacher, or foster parent, has Liskola et al Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health (2021) 15:41 become the standard of practice [36]
The results of our research support the depression-distortion hypothesis concerning the association of maternal depressive symptoms and child internalizing symptoms and externalizing symptoms in girls in a sample without genetic bias
The depression-distortion hypothesis suggests that maternal depression promotes a negative bias in mothers’ perceptions of their children’s behavioral and emotional problems [13, 39, 40], with recent evidence indicating that this effect may be greater in questionnaires than in clinical interviews [32]
Summary
In the assessment of emotional and behavioral psychiatric symptoms in children, the procedure of collecting and combining information from multiple sources, e.g. mother, father, therapist, teacher, or foster parent, has Liskola et al Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health (2021) 15:41 become the standard of practice [36]. The depression-distortion hypothesis suggests that maternal depression promotes a negative bias in mothers’ perceptions of their children’s behavioral and emotional problems [13, 39, 40], with recent evidence indicating that this effect may be greater in questionnaires than in clinical interviews [32]. This hypothesis does not imply that depressed mothers perceive their children in a more negative way, but that their perception is biased. The depression-distortion hypothesis suggests that maternal depression promotes a negative bias in mothers’ perceptions of their children’s behavioral and emotional problems We investigated this difference of perception between adoptive mothers and internationally adopted children. Most previous studies suffer from the potential bias caused by the fact that parents and children share genetic risks
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