Parenting styles and emerging adult depressive symptoms in Cebu, the Philippines

Risk Factors in Depression and Anxiety Disorders from the Framework of Developmental Psychopathology

Depression and anxiety disorders are among the most prevalent psychiatric disorders that negatively affect individuals’ life in many ways. Understanding how these highly comorbid emotional disorders develop and persist might guide prevention, intervention, and treatment studies. Some common vulnerability factors underlie depression and anxiety disorders. Developmental psychopathology deals with these vulnerabilities and risk factors from a lifetime perspective. The aim of this review is to present the risk factors associated with depression and anxiety from the perspective of developmental psychopathology. For this purpose, we discussed genetic and biological factors, temperament, negative childhood experiences, family and peer relationships, and some cognitive and emotional factors as risk factors. Also, we discussed how these risk factors lead to depression and anxiety disorders. This review emphasizes that some common transdiagnostic risk factors underlie emotional disorders and highlights the importance of a developmental psychopathology perspective to understand the developmental pathways of depression and anxiety disorders.

Emerging Adulthood Uses and Gratifications of Social Media During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed Methods Study Among Filipino College Students

This exploratory mixed methods study examines how the emerging adulthood development tasks of autonomy, intimacy, and identity are reflected in the social media (SM) uses and gratifications during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research draws its analysis from qualitative and quantitative data from an online survey of 1003 Filipino college students aged 18-29. Convenient sampling was done via online recruitment on social media sites. Qualitative findings reveal subcategories characterizing how respondents use social media to meet three developmental needs of EA: (1) autonomy, by practicing informational control and performing adulthood-related tasks; (2) intimacy, by maintaining relationships with peers and family; and (3) identity, by engaging in educational experiences and in entertainment and self-expression. Quantitative strand results suggest that sex, household income, Instagram and Tiktok use, and the number of active SM sites are significantly associated with the use of SM for at least one emerging adulthood development task (p < 0.05).

Machine learning models for predicting risk of depression in Korean college students: Identifying family and individual factors

Background

Depression is one of the most prevalent mental illnesses among college students worldwide. Using the family triad dataset, this study investigated machine learning (ML) models to predict the risk of depression in college students and identify important family and individual factors.

Methods

This study predicted college students at risk of depression and identified significant family and individual factors in 171 family data (171 fathers, mothers, and college students). The prediction accuracy of three ML models, sparse logistic regression (SLR), support vector machine (SVM), and random forest (RF), was compared.

Results

The three ML models showed excellent prediction capabilities. The RF model showed the best performance. It revealed five significant factors responsible for depression: self-perceived mental health of college students, neuroticism, fearful-avoidant attachment, family cohesion, and mother's depression. Additionally, the logistic regression model identified five factors responsible for depression: the severity of cancer in the father, the severity of respiratory diseases in the mother, the self-perceived mental health of college students, conscientiousness, and neuroticism.

Discussion

These findings demonstrated the ability of ML models to accurately predict the risk of depression and identify family and individual factors related to depression among Korean college students. With recent developments and ML applications, our study can improve intelligent mental healthcare systems to detect early depressive symptoms and increase access to mental health services.

Bullying and other risk factors related to adolescent suicidal behaviours in the Philippines: a look into the 2011 GSHS Survey

BACKGROUNDS

The present study retrospectively examined gender differences in bullying and suicidal behaviour (ideation, plan, and attempts) as well as associations between selected risk factors and suicidal behaviour among secondary school Filipino students.

METHODS

The study used a secondary data set from the GSHS developed by the World Health Organization, which was conducted in the Philippines in 2011. Participants included 5290 Filipino students (male N = 2279, female N = 2986). A two-tailed Chi-square of independence was used to test for gender differences and a multivariate logistic regression model explored statistical associations between risk factors and outcome variables.

RESULTS

Chi-square results suggested that gender differences were statistically significant for being bullied χ2 (1, N = 2384) = 10.6, p = .001, experiencing suicidal ideation χ2 (1, N = 857) = 61.7, p = .000, making suicide plans χ2 (1, N = 590) = 10.2, p = .001, and suicide attempts χ2 (1, N = 674) = 8.4, p = .004, with females showing higher vulnerability to examined risk factors. The logistic regression model also suggested that adolescents claiming to have no close friends were three to four times more likely to attempt suicide. Other strong predictors of suicidal behaviours were loneliness and getting in trouble due to alcohol consumption.

CONCLUSIONS

Bullying is an independent yet, not the strongest predictor associated with adolescents' suicidal behaviour in the present study. The strongest predictors of Filipino adolescents' suicidal behaviours in the 2011 cohort included having no close friends, loneliness, anxiety and getting in trouble due to alcohol use among both genders. Peer and mental health support programmes need to be made available and accessible for adolescents in the Philippines. Considering the increase in suicide rates in 2020/2021 among Filipino young adults due to the Coronavirus pandemic, it is suggested that preventing suicidal vulnerability in adolescence can hinder this occurrence later on in the lifetime.

Perceived Parenting Styles and Adjustment during Emerging Adulthood: A Cross-National Perspective

The aim of the present study is to determine whether the influence of parenting style on children's wellbeing is sustained during emerging adulthood. This is a stage in which young people, despite feeling themselves to be adults, often remain in the family home and continue to be financially dependent on their parents. Moreover, since parents' beliefs, attitudes and behaviors are constructed and interpreted within their cultural milieu, the study also aims to explore the situation in Spain (SP) and Portugal (PT). Those two Southern Europe countries are representative of what is known as the "family welfare regime", in which the family acts as the main provider of care and security not only during childhood, but also during emerging adulthood. Thus, the present study examines, from a cross-cultural perspective, the relationship between perceived parenting styles and psychological adjustment among a sample of 1047 emerging adults from Spain and Portugal. The results reveal that the most beneficial styles during this stage are the authoritative and permissive ones, with the authoritarian style being more closely related to psychological distress. The study highlights intercultural similarities and the positive role played by more symmetrical relationships in the adjustment of emerging adults in both countries.

Parenting styles and emerging adult drug use in Cebu, the Philippines

Parenting style is a potent and malleable influence on emerging adult substance use. Most of the parenting-substance use literature has been conducted in Western populations and it is unknown whether findings are generalizable to other cultures and contexts. We extended the parenting-substance use literature to a cohort of emerging adults in the Philippines using the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey. We assessed associations between mothers' and fathers' parenting styles (authoritative, permissive, authoritarian, and neglectful) reported by offspring at age 18 and odds of offspring-reported drug use three years later, adjusted for a range of offspring- and parent/household-level characteristics. Females were dropped from analyses due to low prevalence of drug users. We found that many emerging adults in Cebu reported having used drugs, particularly methamphetamine-a dangerous drug with high abuse potential. Authoritative (warm, firm) mothering was significantly associated with sons' reduced odds of drug use and neglectful fathering was related at a trend level with sons' increased odds of having tried drugs. Findings underscore the relation of parenting styles to emerging adults' drug use and add to the literature on cross-cultural variability in parenting styles.