Journal of International Psychiatry

Objective: This study aims to investigate the characteristics of parental emotional expression in adolescents with depressive disorders. Methods: The family situation of 35 adolescents with depressive disorders and 31 healthy controls was self-assessed by General condition scale and the Level of Expressed Emotion Scale (LEE). Results: There was covariance between father and mother LEE scores (r=0.581, p<0.001), and logistic regression models were developed to analyze that either excessive maternal emotional expression (OR: 0.950, 95% CI: 0.920, 0.981) or paternal emotional expression (OR: 0.931, 95% CI: 1.018, 1.158) was a risk factor for adolescent depression. And maternal emotional expression may lead to depression through a fully mediated effect of paternal emotional expression. Conclusions: Adolescent depressive disorders were associated with paternal and maternal emotional expression, and maternal emotional expression may increase the risk of depression by upregulating the subjective paternal emotional expression.

Depression; Adolescent; Emotional expression; Mediator