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Mental health affects teen development
Harmeet Mander
Family Studies, Night school
HHS4U: Families In Canada
Ms.Greene
December 2nd, 2020
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Abstract
Mental health is a common problem for both the younger and older generations. In
today’s society, however, it seems that mental health issues among adolescents are on the rise.
A teenager’s mental health can be affected by school, social media, low self-esteem, peers,
financial matters, stress, and also by a negative family environment. This Personal Research
Project aims to identify what factors of an unstable and dysfunctional family have the greatest
impact on the mental health of an adolescent in a negative way.
This research has a particular importance to the study of families because the relationship
between parents and teenagers is one of the most important relationships we have and both sides
should feel comfortable enough to openly discuss issues and help each other. In this study,
research was gathered from 45 random high school students through a simple questionnaire on
the google form platform. The questionnaire consisted of 16 questions and one general
experience question about personal mental health. The questions were designed to understand if
there is any relationship between the mental health of adolescents and their negative family
environment and parents. Through the analysis of the research results, the study concluded that
there was no direct relationship between a negative family and parental environment and an
adolescents mental health issues. Even adolescents that had a positive family and parental
environment still had mental health issues.
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Introduction
Good mental health can be described as being content and happy and free of depression and
psychological issues. When one is mentally healthy, they have the ability to learn, handle stress,
relate to others, express and handle emotions effectively and generally enjoy a successful life.
However, when mental health issues arise then this can lead to depression, stress, low self esteem and
even suicide. Thus i​t is important to have an understanding of how mental health affects individuals
because when left ​untreated mental illness can lead to bigger problems such as severe emotional,
behavioral and physical health problems. Complications that are linked to mental illness include:
unhappiness and decreased enjoyment in life (Mayoclinic 1). ​ ​ This study aims to investigate the
various factors a dysfunctional family has and how it influences the mental health of adolescent
individuals.
Adolescents who are exposed to constant negative parenting and dysfunctional family
environments may have a harder time dealing with and solving mental health issues because they
don’t have good support mechanisms. This can lead to unhappy and unproductive lives, substance
abuse​, behavioural problems, depression and suicide. “Children from dysfunctional families are also
more likely to become withdrawn and socially isolated. They often feel lonely and have difficulty
expressing their feelings, and they are at risk of developing depression, low self-esteem, anxiety, and
more.” (King 1) Furthermore, adolescents that grow up in dysfunctional families are more likely to
repeat the cycle of bad parenting behaviour as they grow into adulthood.
Although, there is no proper definition of bad or negative parenting, the role of parents can be
seen when we analyze the six main traits of a dysfunctional family: poor communication, drug or
alcohol abuse, perfectionism, lack of empathy, control, and excessive criticism. (King 1). When there
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is poor communication in a family then it is hard to build good relationships. Adolescents may feel
misunderstood and that their parents are not listening to their point of view. If there are drug or
alcohol issues in a family involving parents then the negative environment may have a big impact on
an adolescents mental health because the main caretaker of the family is not performing their
guidance and protective role properly. The parent should be the responsible adult in charge but the
adolescent might have to take on that role instead and this might cause additional stress. The other
stressful factors of a dysfunctional family are perfectionism and excessive criticism. When parents
have high expectations or are constantly criticizing their children then this has an impact on
self-image and self esteem. Another factor of bad parenting is when parents are judgemental and
show a lack of empathy. This can lead to adolescents to feel unloved and unwanted. Lastly, parents
that are too controlling and don’t let their children be independent may cause adolescents to have
low self confidence and self-worth.
This report will first investigate if a dysfunctional environment and bad parenting has an
impact on the mental health of an adolescent. Secondly, if there is an impact then what specific
factors make the greatest impact. Once these factors can be determined and understood in more
detail then the process of fixing mental health issues in adolescents can take place. Also, if it can be
proven that positive parenting leads to mentally healthy and happy adolescents then a strategy to
change parenting styles from bad to good can be developed.
The research study will try to narrow
down and analyze adolescents' points of view on whether their parents are to blame for any of their
mental health issues.
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Method
The purpose of this research report is to find out if negative parenting affects an adolescent’s
mental health. This research involved surveying an anonymous group of teenagers. There were 45
high school students that had participated in the survey and 30 indicated that they were females and
15 were males. Since the survey was anonymous the location and nationality of the participants is
not known. Before the survey was started individuals were told that the survey was anonymous and
private. Participants that have completed this survey showed that they were collaborative to conduct
personal research for a report.
The questionnaire consisted of 16 questions. Some questions asked were how would you rate
your mental health, how often do you experience depression, what causes your depression, what are
your sleeping habits like and do you feel supported at home. Some of the questions were “yes and
no'' answers and others were rated on a scale of 1 to 10. The two most important questions were:
what parenting style do you parents use on you and do your parents cause you to have depressive
symptoms. The last question was a general question which asked “Have you ever experienced a
mental health issue? Explain the issue and how you resolved it”.
The questionnaire was distributed through google forms and was open to everyone. Once I
gathered all the results I organized the results based on the answers and analyzed the data. I looked
for similarities and differences and calculated percentages to make the data reporting easier to
understand.
​Results
After analyzing the results I noticed that 14% of the participants never feel depressed and 86%
of the participants feel depressed often or sometimes. This result is expected because adolescents
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generally have a lot of pressures and this affects their mental health. The issues can be related to
school stress, peer relationships, social media, self-esteem, finances, family environments, and many
other things. When the participants were asked what causes your depression 42.2% answered
‘everything’, 24.4% answered ‘school’, 24.4% answered ‘I don’t know’ and 8.9% answered
‘parents’. This question is very important for this research report because it directly asks the
participants the source of their depression and 4 participants out of 45 answered that their parents are
the reason for their depression. This number indicates that there might be a small number of
dysfunctional families in the population where adolescents feel the parents are causing their mental
health and depression issues.
One interesting question asked if the participant feels supported at home and
33.3% of the
participants said they ‘do not feel supported at home’. This result was interesting because it
indicates that even though parents are not supportive for 15 participants out of 45, only 4 participants
out of 45 blame their parents for their depression. That means that 11 participants who feel that they
are not supported at home still have a good relationship with their parents and don’t blame them.
Another question that supports the good relationship with parents was do your parents help you with
your social problems. In this case, 53.3% of the participants answered ‘not at all’. This indicates that
24 out of 45 participants said they did not receive help from their parents but only 4 out of 45 said
that their parents are to blame for their depression. This number means that 20 participants do not
blame their parents for their social or depression problems. This contradicts my research report which
hypotheses that bad parenting and negative family environments causes adolescent mental health
issues. The last two questions indicate that even if parents are not helpful and supportive it does not
lead to adolescent’s mental health issues.
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Another interesting statistic was for the question that asked about the parenting styles used at
home. The results were that 40% of the participants answered authoritative parenting, 28.9%
answered permissive parenting, 20% answered authoritarian and 11% answered neglectful parenting.
The authoritative parenting style is considered the best style because it shows parents as being
comforting and supportive. The permissive parenting style is known as one of the harshest parenting
styles. Permissive parenting is a parent who is afraid to set limits on their adolescent. It can also mean
when parents simply do not care about their children, do not accept their suggestions or help them
even if the adolescent wants to explain what has been troubling them. (​Trautner 1). The permissive
parenting number at 28.9% seems a bit high, but this could be related to the fact that adolescents are
not aware of all the different parenting styles and thus were not able to answer the question
effectively and truthfully. The 11% of the participants that answered the neglectful parenting style
probably answered truthfully as the answer is self-explanatory. These participants are most likely the
same participants that answered that their parents are to blame for their depression. The neglectful
parenting style is also considered a bad parenting style.
Parenting styles play an important role in families because they mold and teach adolescent
behaviours. Parents should be able to understand that whatever you teach your child and adolescents
they copy you because they look up to you as a role model. If parents show respect and empathy for
their adolescents they will do the same when interacting with people around them. Teaching them
how to manage emotions, like frustration or sadness and talking about their feelings will make them
feel better. You should always encourage your adolescents to do the right thing. When that happens
that’s what makes their mental health stronger. (Morin 1).
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Lastly,​ 14 out of 45 ​adolescents rating their self-worth very low. This was a bit shocking and
sad because it shows that adolescents are likely to have depressive and suicidal thoughts. This result
is quite inevitable when related to negative parenting styles because feeling worthless in the world
directly related to unsupportive parents and dysfunctional families. In order for an adolescent to live
a happy lifestyle parents have to contribute positively in their adolescent life. Parents have to​ be
dominant in their adolescents' lives, have open discussions, accept their decisions, give them
reasonable and meaningful advice and not be too strict. This is the key to having a happier
adolescent.
​ To end off the results section, the hypothesis that was originally stated is not supported well
with the research results because it does not directly prove that parents are the cause of adolescent
mental health issues. A few of the answers to the research questions show that even though parents
are not helpful or supportive, adolescents do not blame their parents for their mental health issues.
Depression and other mental health issues seem to be caused by a variety of other problems but
parents should still try to help their adolescents in a positive manner by using a better parenting style
to provide a stable and positive family environment.
​Discussion
The main objective of this mental health personal research was to figure out if negative
parenting has an impact on an adolescent’s mental health and in which ways. The results of personal
research and literature review, a possible conclusion is that when it comes to mental health, for
adolescents, the general assumption is that some parents do not care enough to provide a stable
positive environment. There are a large number of adolescents that experience mental health
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problems believing that they are not worthy.
Negative parenting can affect a teen’s development
and cause traumatic outcomes such as : doing poorly in school, trouble interacting with peers,
wanting to commit sucide and suffering long term depression. One shocking result was that
11.1% of adolescents feel that their parents use a neglectful parenting style. This parenting style
happens when parents are not part of their adolescents life at all or do not respond to their teenagers
basic needs for food, shelter and support with social problems.
In addition for parents to become good parents they should realize that it is essential to have
good parenting skills in order to have well adjusted children. Also, mental health is just as important
to education and should be taught in schools. Logically, we know that mental health issues begin
during the school years because sometimes however they stress their children on what path to take in
high school or university which can cause their adolescents to have extreme stress, lower their self
esteem which can cause them to feel like their parents do not care about them. (​McLean​ 1).
One individual, who identified herself, had very unfortunate and depressing responses to all
16 questions. Her responses show that she gets depressed often, her parents are not supportive and do
not help her with social problems or general aspects of life. These led her to have poor sleeping
habits and depressive symptoms. Her comments indicated that her parents applied the permissive
parenting style and stressed her over her career choice for post secondary. They never help her or
agree with her decisions, life preferences or anything in general that she may need assistance with.
This result was not common but it was the most distressing in the research report.
There were three literature reviews that were used to compare with this research report.
The first study examines how social media can cause mental health issues in adolescents. The
World Health Organization conducted 13 studies to figure out how and why many teenagers' mental
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health is affected when having negative experiences with social media. The study had reported that
10-20% of children and adolescents will experience mental health problems due to social media. It is
estimated that 50% of all mental disorders are established by the age of 14 and 75% by the age of 18.
From these studies, they found that depression was the most common measured outcome. The
purpose of this study was to figure out that if teenagers have negative experiences due to social
media and do they end up experiencing mental health issues. The studies have proven that
adolescents are affected by social media because these see things in a different way. For example, if
teenagers see a “prettier” post then this affects their mental health because teenagers want to be the
best and number one. They do not like having competition with other people. The researcher
hypothesized that bullying can also affect an adolescent’s mental health because teens cannot
properly process negative criticism and people's rude behaviour found on social media.
The second study relates to negative parenting and showed that a parent with an authoritative
parenting style, which is good, still had an adolescent that did poorly in school. The parents were not
too happy about this and stressed the adolescent and this caused depression and low self esteem
which in turn led to poor mental health. This study showed that the relation of positive and negative
parenting to children's depressive symptoms was ​ very complicated because “ positive parenting and
negative parenting behaviors were affecting teenagers' mental health and their psychological
development.” (Clin 1). This study practically shows how parents sometimes treat their teenagers in
two opposite ways. Some parents are strict while others do not care about their teenagers at all. Both
types of parents can negatively affect their adolescent’s mental health. If a parent is too strict then
adolescents will think that they are not loved or that parents are constantly too harsh. Teenagers like
to be independent and do not like their parents standing behind them all the time. If parents are not
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strict at all, this can also make teenagers feel unwanted and unloved and this creates a miserable
adolescent who may have psychological problems later.
In the second literature review, the researcher conducted additional studies that showed how
teenagers' mental health can be affected by different parenting styles and nature versus nurture. The
first study showed that teenagers who have experienced authoritative parenting can still have
problems with school. The other study shows a person’s behaviour and character traits can be
influenced through genetics (nature) and environment (nurture). This research was an expanded
study that gave more knowledge about all the true factors. Adolescents that suffer from the traumatic
mental health illness do not sleep well and can still experience depressive symptoms: anxiety, stress,
suicide, loneliness, behvaioral disorders and etc. This research provided findings around how
negative parenting can actually affect the mental health of an adolescent more accurately.
To end off, there was one main ​limitation for this research and that was that only 18 out of 45
participants shared their personal experiences of if they have ever had a mental issue and if so how
did they resolve it. This question was not mandatory, however, this was a limitation because most
adolescents did not share their personal experiences. Adolescents are sometimes in their own world
but they should know that they are not alone. There are many different platforms to talk to someone
about their mental health anonymously perhaps like the Kids Help Line, and other websites with
numbers to call to help an adolescent with what they are going through. It is understandable that
adolescents were not comfortable sharing their personal experiences but the main message of this
research report is to show that an adolescent’s mental health is not necessarily related to bad
parenting and dysfunctional families. Mental health issues in adolescents are impacted by a variety of
factors but the main message is that mental health has to be taken seriously and resolved quickly.
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References
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https://online.king.edu/news/dysfunctional-families/
Dallaire, D. H., Pineda, A. Q., Cole, D. A., Ciesla, J. A., Jacquez, F., Lagrange, B., & Bruce, A. E. (2006,
June). Relation of positive and negative parenting to children's depressive symptoms. Retrieved from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3152307/
Mental illness. (2019, June 08). Retrieved from
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/mental-illness/symptoms-causes/syc-2037496
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​Keles, B., Mccrae, N., & Grealish, A. (2019). A systematic review: The influence of social media on
depression, anxiety and psychological distress in adolescents. ​International Journal of Adolescence and Youth,
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Li, A. P. (2020, November 03). 4 Types of Parenting Styles and Their Effects. Retrieved from
https://www.parentingforbrain.com/4-baumrind-parenting-styles/
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What Is Mental Health? (n.d.). Retrieved from
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