Project Title:
Providence Family Study of Affective and Anxiety
Disorders
Principal Investigator:
Ronald Seifer
Co-Investigators:
Arnold Sameroff & Susan Dickstein
Contact Person and Information:
Ronald Seifer, Ph. D.
Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Brown University
1011 Veterans Memorial Parkway
East Providence, RI 02915
E-mail: Ronald_Seifer@brown.edu
Voice:(401) 751-8040; Fax:(401) 331-2768
STUDY AIMS:
The study is designed to examine the processes by which parental affective and
anxiety disorders affect the development of their preschool children.
Comparisons are made among hypotheses that the effects are: (1) independent of
the child’s experience, (2) dependent on mother’s depressed or anxious behavior,
(3) mediated by family interaction variables, or (4) mediated by social and
economic conditions.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE INITIAL SAMPLE:
Selection criteria:
Mothers with a 1 or 2-1/2 year old child and either (1) a psychiatric diagnosis of
affective disorder (2) anxiety disorder or (3) no psychiatric diagnosis.
Sample characteristics:
Gender:
Ethnicity:
Socioeconomic Status:
COMPLETED WAVES:
51% Male, 49% Female
97% White (Representative of local psychiatric
hospital population)
High to Low
Wave
Age of Subjects
N:
1
2
1 to 2-1/2 years
4 years
180
180
CURRENT FUNDED WAVES:
3
9 years
DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES:
Early Childhood
Middle Childhood
MEASURES
Personal
Personality
Temperament
Attachment
Cognitive Competence:
Mastery Motivation and Problem Solving
Language
Symptoms and Syndromes:
Sleep Disturbances
Child Behavior Check List
Social
Family:
Mother’s and Father’s Mental Health
Marital Interaction
Family Functioning
Parenting Style
Stresses and Supports:
Social Relationships
Life Events
Environmental Risk Score
REPRESENTATIVE FINDINGS:
1) Depressed mothers are more likely to marry men with psychiatric symptoms
and to have more problems in family functioning than mothers with no psychiatric
symptoms.
2) Mothers with current symptoms of depression have a greater negative effect on
child competence than mothers with only a past diagnosis of depression.
3) Disturbed family functioning explains much of the relation between mother’s
diagnosis of affective disorder and child behavior.
REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS:
Seifer, R., Sameroff, A. J., Dickstein, Keitner, G., & Miller, I. (1996). Parental
psychopathology, multiple contextual risks, and one-year outcomes in children. Journal of
Clinical Child Psychology, 25, 423-435.
Dickstein, S., Seifer, R., Hayden, L. C., Schiller, M., Sameroff, A. J., Keitner, G., Miller, I.,
Rasmussen, S., Matzko, M., & Magee, K.D. (1998). Levels of family assessment II:
Impact of maternal psychopathology on family functioning. Journal of Family
Psychology, 12, 23-40.
Hayden, L. C., Schiller, M., Dickstein, S., Seifer, R., Sameroff, A. J., Miller, I., Keitner, G., &
Rasmussen, S. (1998). Levels of family assessment I: Family, marital, and parent-child
interaction. Journal of Family Psychology. 12, 7-22.