THE ORIGINS OF MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS IN THE FAMILY

本提案的基础是几个假设。第一，家庭 这些过程可能会导致儿童的心理健康问题， 看门人，这些问题将在过渡时显现出来 对孩子的发展有很大影响。第二，家庭流程也将 考虑到孩子在社交和认知领域的能力 不同的能力会导致不同的自我评估。 第三，如果我们要了解家庭，就必须随着时间的推移对家庭进行研究 影响结果的过程。我们目前正在 跟踪调查了185个有孩子的家庭，从18个月到 在7岁时过渡到学校。我们发现 没有准备好处理他们的孩子在 学步阶段有很大的困难；这种困难一直持续到 4岁。如果父母不能迅速培养出一套全新的 技能，孩子们不会学习适合年龄的行为。作为 孩子的行为变得不太适合年龄，父母的技能 效率较低，降低了每个人应对下一个问题的能力 危机。压力事件或婚姻不和经常发生，足以 加剧了亲子关系中的长期问题。 管理技能的中断降低了父母指导孩子的能力 或者提供有指导的学习。 这些孩子一直被跟踪着经历了 学校入学，我们又增加了100个高危家庭 区域。我们正在通过一个组合来检查家庭过程 家长自我报告测量、实验室任务和家庭观察。 对于年龄较大的一组儿童，我们还将检查儿童的 对家庭角色和功能的认知。育儿变量将会是 在三个领域使用多种方法进行评估(行为、情感和 认知)。我们将在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，同样重要的是在这一领域获得更多信息 功能正常。我们增加了一项对孩子同伴关系的检查， 7岁到目前的研究。我们将继续收集这方面的数据 这是拟议研究中的一个重要领域。

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.