Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms Between Parents and Their Children Following a Natural Disaster: An Integrated Model Under a Dyadic Approach

Clinical Impact Statement This study suggests that children are not passive recipients of their parents' posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSSs), and their psychological and behavioral activities play an important role in the process of parents' PTSSs influencing adolescents' PTSSs. It also highlights that the psychological intervention for parents' and their children' PTSSs may hinder this mechanism by improving parental marital relationships, increasing children's self-differentiation and psychological flexibility, and decreasing children's rumination. Objective: Various theories have been proposed to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the effect of parental posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSSs) on their children. However, these theories focused on unique mechanisms for some factors and overlooked the combined role of different factors. This study aimed to construct a broad theoretical framework to comprehensively understand the mechanisms underlying the effect of parents' PTSSs on adolescents. We examined the combined role of parental PTSSs and marital conflict, and adolescents' self-differentiation, psychological inflexibility, and rumination after super typhoon Lekima. Method: We used self-report questionnaires to investigate 1,218 parent-adolescent dyads in the area most affected by the disaster 3 months after the typhoon. Results: Parents' PTSSs had a direct and positive association with adolescents' PTSSs. We also observed parents' PTSSs had an indirect relationship with adolescents' PTSSs through parental marital conflict and adolescents' self-differentiation, psychological inflexibility, and rumination. Conclusions: An effect of PTSSs may be found in the dyadic interaction between parents and their children. Children's psychological and behavioral changes resulting from impaired family relationship functioning exhibited by their posttraumatic parents also play an important role in the interpersonal effect of PTSSs.