THE ORIGINS OF MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS IN THE FAMILY

本提案的基础是几个假设。 第一，家庭 过程可能导致儿童的心理健康问题， 这些问题将在过渡时期显现出来 孩子发展的关键点。 其次，家庭过程也将 考虑到孩子在社会和认知领域的能力 不同的能力会导致不同的自我评价。 第三，如果我们要理解家庭， 影响结果的过程。 我们目前正在 跟踪了185个有18个月大孩子的家庭， 7岁时进入学校。我们发现， 他们没有准备好处理孩子们在战争期间争取自治的问题， 这是一个很大的困难;这个困难一直持续到 4岁。 如果父母不迅速发展一套全新的 孩子们没有学会与年龄相适应的行为。 为 孩子们的行为变得不那么适合年龄，父母的技能 效率较低，降低了每个人科普下一次危机的能力。 危机 压力事件或婚姻不和经常发生， 在亲子关系中引发长期的问题。 管理技能的中断降低了父母的指导能力 或者提供指导性学习。 这些孩子们被跟踪经历了 学校入学，我们又增加了100个高风险家庭， 地区 我们正在通过以下几个方面的结合来研究家庭过程： 父母自我报告措施，实验室任务，和家庭观察。 对于年龄较大的儿童，我们还将检查儿童的 对家庭角色和职能的认识。 育儿变量将是 在三个领域（行为，影响， 认知）。 我们将从三个方面研究儿童结局变量 （认知能力，亲社会行为和问题行为）。 由于不良的同伴关系是心理健康的主要预测因素 问题，重要的是要在这方面获得更多的信息， 功能 我们增加了对孩子的同伴关系的检查， 7岁到目前为止的研究。 我们将继续收集数据， 在拟议的研究中。

Several assumptions underlie the present proposal. First, family processes can lead to mental health problems for the child and caretaker, and these problems will manifest themselves at transition points in the child's development. Second, family processes will also account for the child's competencies in both social and cognitive areas and different competencies will result in varying self-evaluations. Third, families must be studied over time if we are ever to understand the processes by which outcomes are influenced. We are currently following 185 families with children from 18 months through the transition into school at age 7. We have found that parents who are unprepared to deal with their children's bids for autonomy during the toddler period have great difficulty; this difficulty persists until the age of 4. If the parents do not quickly develop a whole new set of skills, the children do not learn age-appropriate behaviors. As the children's behaviors become less age-appropriate, the parents' skills are less effective, decreasing everyone's ability to cope with the next crisis. Stressful events or marital discord occur often enough to precipitate long-term problems in the parent-child relationship. Disruption in management skills reduces the parents' ability to instruct or to provide guided learning. These same children have been followed through the major transition of school entry, and we have added another 100 families from high-risk areas. We are examining family processes through a combination of parent self-report measures, laboratory tasks, and home observations. With the older group of children, we will also examine the child's perception of family roles and functions. Parenting variables ill be assessed using multiple methods in three domains (behavior, affect, and cognition). We will look at child outcome variables in three areas (cognitive competence, prosocial behaviors, and problem behaviors). Since poor peer relations are a major predictor of mental health problems, it as important to gain additional information in this area of functioning. We added an examination of the child's peer relations at age 7 to the current study. We will continue collecting data in this area in the proposed study.