Family supportive communication and depression during early to middle adolescence: a technology-enhanced naturalistic observational study - PROJECT SUMMARY
Depression is a common debilitating disorder in adolescents that compel high levels of support and care
from parents. In addition to the benefits of symptom reduction, support from parents may promote positive
emotions and reduce negative emotions in the daily lives of youth. Although examined as separate constructs,
youth support seeking and parental support constitute a dynamic dyadic process (i.e., supportive
communication), wherein the coordination between the youth and the parent’s behaviors is associated with
depression risk. Youth who benefit most from parental support, such as those with depression risk, are more
likely to receive lower quality support, which may discourage future attempts at seeking parental support. To
better inform future interventions targeting this crucial protective process for the prevention of depression, we
will characterize four indices of the parent-youth supportive communication – youth support seeking, parent
enactment of support, support concordance (i.e., concordance between parent enactment of support and youth
support seeking), and youth perception of parental support – in the daily lives of youth with and without risk for
depression. A multi-method and multi-information investigation of supportive communication can better reveal
how interventions can promote the coordination of parent and youth behaviors for maximum benefit in youth
with risk for depression. The proposed intensive longitudinal methods will characterize supportive
communication in parent-youth dyads as they arise in real time and in real world settings over a two-week
period. Study will recruit 100 12-15 year old youth with high and low levels of depression symptoms, as well as
primary caregivers. Over a two week period, the study will conduct continuous measurements of parent-youth
proximity using Bluetooth signal strengths, automated event-contingent ecological momentary assessments of
supportive communication with parents and youth, and obtain naturalistic video recordings of parent-youth
conversations in daily life to address the following specific aims: Aim 1) Develop, test, and refine a coding
system to describe parent-youth supportive communication in video recordings of daily conversations using
existing pilot data from two families; Aim 2) Characterize daily parent-youth supportive communication in youth
with high and low levels of depression risk; Aim 3) Test whether the four indices of supportive communication
mediate associations between depression risk and daily negative and positive emotions at end-of-day,
independent of stress; and Exploratory Aim) Explore whether the association between depression risk and
supportive communication differ by youth self-reported gender, race/ethnicity and socio-economic status.
Significance: Insights from this innovative study will help to pinpoint strategies for improving supportive
communication in daily life, and inform the design of a family-focused ecological momentary intervention for the
prevention of adolescent depression.
