Parent and Youth Discrepancy Ratings of Mental Health Symptoms in Adolescents: The Moderating Role of Family Functioning

Abstract

Internalizing disorders are prevalent among youth. However, disagreements exist between parents’ and youth’s reports of mental health symptoms. In particular, youth-onset internalizing disorders such as depression and anxiety have been shown to have the highest reporter discrepancies amongst all disorders. In this study we examined what may contribute to these discrepancies by examining the moderating role of family functioning in a sample of 456 parent-adolescent dyads. Results indicated that although discrepancies did exist between parent and adolescent (M age = 14.97 years; SD = 0.33 years) reports of both anxiety and depression, family functioning did not significantly moderate these discrepancies. The results of this study provide further knowledge on the subject of youth mental health by establishing the presence of parent-adolescent report discrepancies.