برداشت نوجوانان از رفتارهای پدر و مادر و ارتباط آن با علائم اختلال اضطراب فراگیر نوجوانان

This study examined the relationship between how adolescents perceived parenting behaviours and adolescent Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) symptom scores. The 1106 junior high and high school students (12–19 years old; 49.6% males and 50.4% females) completed questionnaires regarding their perception of parenting behaviours and self-rated symptoms of GAD. The findings of this study demonstrate that adolescent perceptions of parental alienation and rejection are strongly associated with adolescent GAD symptom scores. Additionally, mid-adolescence females perceive more parental alienation in relation to their GAD symptom scores than both early and mid-adolescent males. And early adolescent males perceive more parental rejection in relation to their GAD symptom scores than mid-adolescent males.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) is a deliberating disorder (Mancuso, Townsend, & Mercante, 1993) which generally has an early and gradual onset that many times leads to a long and chronic course (Dugas, 2000; Hunt & Singh, 1991). Additionally sufferers of GAD place a strong burden on the primary care setting (Wittchen, 2002). It is suggested that GAD develops early during childhood and mid-adolescence (Comer & Kendall, 2004) leading some to hypothesize that GAD might be the basic anxiety from which other anxiety disorders later emerge (Borkovec, Newman, Pincus, & Lytle, 2002; Brown, Barlow, & Liebowitz, 1994). It is for these reasons that attention into child and adolescent GAD is growing. The core symptom of GAD is excessive, persistent and uncontrollable worry (Comer & Kendall, 2004; Rapee, 2001) and researchers such as Borkovec (1994) have noted that a major component of the worry of GAD sufferers centers on interpersonal difficulties (Borkovec, Alcaine, & Behar, 2004). In respect to adolescents it is suggested that a focus of GAD worry centers on social-evaluative concerns (Hudson & Rapee, 2004). Hence, research of factors involved in adolescent GAD symptoms also should be conducted into interpersonal factors involved in adolescent social-evaluative concerns. Two interpersonal factors involved in adolescent social-evaluative concerns that have been related to adolescent GAD symptoms are adolescent perceptions of parental rejection and over-control behaviours (Rapee, 1997). A study by Muris and Merckelbach (1998) of (pre-)adolescents (8–12 years old) found significant relationships between the adolescents’ perception of parental rejection and over-control behaviours and adolescent GAD symptoms.