Parent-adolescent conversations about mental health and well-being shaped adolescents' anxiety/depression during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed challenges to the mental health and well-being (MHW) of adolescents. The present study aimed to explore how parent-adolescent conversations may have protected (or threatened) adolescent mental health during the first year of the pandemic. We examined how parents and adolescents discussed MHW together and the influence of parents' affective conversational climate on changes in adolescent anxiety/depression over time. Participants were 183 parent-adolescent dyads (adolescents: M_age = 15.23 years, SD = 0.06, 50% female assigned at birth; 47.0% Latine; parents: M_age = 42.76, SD = 6.95, 93% biological mothers) from Southern California, United States. Adolescents reported their symptoms of anxiety/depression in spring 2020 (T1) and winter 2020/2021 (T3). Between July 2020 and March 2021 (T2), parent-adolescent dyads engaged in an 8-min audio-recorded conversation about the pandemic. Conversations were coded for adolescent and parent references to MHW (i.e., their contributions to discussing their own or others' mental health and strategies to cope with challenges) and parents' affective climate (i.e., parents' positive and negative emotion talk). Higher parental contribution and lower adolescent contribution to MHW discussions predicted increases in adolescents' anxiety/depression from T1 to T3. Parents' positive emotion talk predicted decreases in adolescents' anxiety/depression over time, and, at increased levels of parents' negative emotion talk, parental control over the MHW discussion predicted increases in adolescents' anxiety/depression. These findings highlight that conversations may be important social processes that contribute to adolescent well-being during times of crisis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).