The interplay of family support and family incivility on adolescent mental health

Abstract

Both positive and negative family interactions are closely associated with adolescent mental health. Using an integrated point of view, this study used a longitudinal design to examine the interplay patterns of family support and family incivility on adolescent mental health. Two waves of data were collected from 999 Chinese high school students. Polynomial regressions and response surface analyses were used to examine interplay patterns of family support and incivility, specifically, their congruence effect and incongruence effect on mental health outcomes, including well-being (life satisfaction and meaning in life) and psychopathological symptoms (anxiety and depressive symptoms). Model comparison was conducted within a series of models to select the best fitting model for each mental health outcome. As for positive mental health outcomes, both life satisfaction and meaning in life had a curvilinear correlation with the incongruence of family support and family incivility. The correlations were larger when family support was higher than family incivility than vice versa. Additionally, a significant interaction effect of family support and family incivility was found on meaning in life. Specifically, the positive association between family support and meaning in life was weaker when family incivility was high. As for negative mental health outcomes, both anxiety and depressive symptoms were linearly correlated with the incongruence of family support and family incivility. Specifically, greater family support relative to family incivility was associated with lower levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms. These findings promoted understanding of the impact of family environment on adolescent mental health and highlighted the importance of considering both positive and negative forms of family interaction.