Empathy and psychopathology in children and adolescents: the role of parental mental illness and emotion regulation

Arleta A Luczejko; Klara Hagelweide; Rudolf Stark; Sarah Weigelt; Hanna Christiansen; Meinhard Kieser; Kathleen Otto; Corinna Reck; Ricarda Steinmayr; Linda Wirthwein; Anna-Lena Zietlow; Christina Schwenck; COMPARE-family research group

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1366366

Empathy and psychopathology in children and adolescents: the role of parental mental illness and emotion regulation

Front Psychiatry. 2024 Apr 8:15:1366366. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1366366. eCollection 2024.

Collaborators

COMPARE-family research group:
Stracke, Gilbert, Eitenmüller, Awounvo, Kirchner, Klose, Buntrock, Ebert, Schlarb, Margraf, Schneider, Friedrich, Teismann, Stark, Metzger, Brakemeier, Wardenga, Hauck, Glombiewski, Schröder, Heider, Jungmann, Witthöft, Rief, Eitenmüller

Affiliations

¹ Department of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany.
² Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Technical University Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany.
³ Department of Psychotherapy and Systems Neuroscience, Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany.
⁴ Department of Psychology, Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, Philipps University Marburg, Marburg, Germany.
⁵ Institute of Medical Biometry, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
⁶ Department of Work and Organizational Psychology, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany.
⁷ Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.
⁸ Department of Psychology, Technical University Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany.
⁹ Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, Department of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.

Abstract

Objective: Although empathy is known to be a strength, recent studies suggest that empathy can be a risk factor for psychopathology under certain conditions in children. This study examines parental mental illness as such a condition. Further, it aims to investigate whether maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) mediates the relationship between empathy and psychopathological symptoms of children.

Methods: Participants were 100 children of parents with a mental illness (55% female) and 87 children of parents without a mental illness (50% female) aged 6 - 16 years and their parents.

Results: Greater cognitive empathy was related to more psychopathological symptoms in COPMI, but not in COPWMI. In addition, in COPMI maladaptive ER mediated this relationship. In contrast, greater affective empathy was associated with more psychopathological symptoms regardless of whether parents had a mental illness.

Conclusion: Our findings highlight the importance of implementing preventive programs for COPMI that specifically target the reduction of maladaptive ER.

Keywords: children of parents with mental illness; emotion regulation; empathy; parents with mental illness; transgenerational transmission of mental disorders.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under Grant # 01GL1748C.