Category: Parenting / Families
Olivia Derella, Ph.D.
Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine
New York, New York
Jeffrey D. Burke, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
University of Connecticut
Storrs, Connecticut
Damion Grasso, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
UCONN Health Center
Farmington, Connecticut
Olivia Derella, Ph.D.
Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine
New York, New York
Ashley Karlovich, PhD
Doctoral Student
University of Miami
Coral Gables, Florida
Kaila Falk, M.S.
Doctoral Candidate
Yeshiva University - Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology
New York, New York
Abbey Horton, M.A.
University of Connecticut
Storrs, Connecticut
Two years of the COVID-19 pandemic have wrought suffering and reshaped communities around the world. In the United States, adults now endorse notable rates of depression and anxiety amidst the losses associated with illness and death, social isolation, cancelled gatherings, and economic precarity (Gallagher et al., 2020). For many who experience marginalization based on socioeconomic status or racial-ethnic identity, the pandemic worsened pre-existing disparities. How do you parent a child under these conditions, with the additional lost supports of childcare, burdens of remote learning, changing safety guidelines, and later infection-related school closures? The evidence is clear that caregivers’ mental health has been profoundly impacted by the sequelae of COVID-19 (Brown et al., 2020; Patrick et al., 2020). As parents struggle, their children experience cascading impacts of caregiver depression, anxiety, and trauma, with detrimental outcomes for child emotional and behavioral health (Bate et al., 2021; Russell et al., 2020). It remains an urgent task for researchers and clinicians to learn how to strengthen parental, and in turn child, psychological resilience in uncontrollable circumstances (Peris & Ehrenreich-May, 2021). To better tailor our evidence-based interventions for the context of a global pandemic, we must disentangle the mechanistic pathways that lead to worsening caregiver and child distress.
This symposium brings together five research programs to address the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes that shaped trajectories of parent and child psychosocial functioning across COVID-19. Our first presentation harnesses person-centered analyses to classify new mothers based on pandemic-related impacts, identifying group differences in levels of emotion dysregulation, internalizing and posttraumatic symptoms, and infant-parent interactions. Our second talk explores caregiver coping-related behaviors, including socialization of child coping, linked to changes in parent and child mental health symptoms prior to and after the onset of COVID-19. The third presentation maps out the roles of both parent and child intolerance of uncertainty as contributing risk factors for worsening child mental health symptoms across four timepoints. Our fourth talk addresses the impacts of parental reflective functioning and experiential avoidance on the manifestation of child psychosocial health at the beginning of the pandemic and one year later. Finally, our fifth talk assesses antecedents of caregivers’ experiences of ambiguous loss across the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, with special focus on stress, self-regulation, and coping.
Advancing what is known about the mental health impacts of the pandemic on families, these talks will address several potentially modifiable risk factors, including emotion dysregulation and coping strategy use, that are common transdiagnostic targets of cognitive-behavioral interventions. Discussion will thus center on the clinical implications of identified psychological processes among parents and their children. These findings highlight entry points for clinicians to support the needs of caregivers adapting to the pandemic and other prolonged crises.
Presenter: Damion Grasso, Ph.D. – UCONN Health Center
Co-author: Damion Grasso, Ph.D. – UCONN Health Center
Co-author: Kimberly McCarthy, MSW – University Of Connecticut School Of Medicine
Co-author: Brandon Goldstein, PhD – University Of Connecticut School Of Medicine
Co-author: Matthew Lewin, BS – University Of Connecticut School Of Medicine
Co-author: Adriana Sowell, BA – University Of Connecticut School Of Medicine
Co-author: Margaret Briggs-Gowan, PhD – University Of Connecticut School Of Medicine
Presenter: Olivia J. Derella, Ph.D. – Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Co-author: Olivia J. Derella, Ph.D. – Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Co-author: Emilie J. Butler, BA – University of Connecticut
Co-author: Jeffrey D. D. Burke, Ph.D. – University of Connecticut
Presenter: Ashley R. Karlovich, PhD – University of Miami
Co-author: Ashley R. Karlovich, PhD – University of Miami
Co-author: Hannah L. Grassie, BA – University of Miami
Co-author: Jonathan S. Comer, Ph.D. – Florida International University
Co-author: Jill Ehrenreich-May, Ph.D. – University of Miami
Co-author: Angela Evans, Ph.D. – Brock University
Co-author: Lindsay Malloy, Ph.D. – Ontario Tech University
Co-author: Tara S. Peris, Ph.D. – UCLA
Co-author: Donna B. Pincus, Ph.D. – Boston University
Co-author: Spencer C. Evans, PhD – University of Miami
Presenter: Kaila Falk, M.S. – Yeshiva University - Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology
Co-author: Kaila Falk, M.S. – Yeshiva University - Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology
Co-author: Ozlem Bekar, PhD – Northwell Health, Lenox Hill Hospital
Co-author: Jessica Borelli, PhD – University of California, Irvine
Co-author: Jordan Bate, PhD – Yeshiva University, Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology
Presenter: Abbey L. Horton, M.A. – University of Connecticut
Co-author: Abbey L. Horton, M.A. – University of Connecticut
Co-author: Beth S. Russell, PhD – University of Connecticut
Co-author: Rachel Tambling, PhD – University of Connecticut