Chaotic families are more likely to cause mental health problems in adolescents as adults

Teens who reported their families were more chaotic at age 16 had worse mental health outcomes at age 23 - Photo: Adobe

Researchers aimed to explore the long-term impact of family chaos on mental health.

Mental health risks from the family environment

The study emphasized that adolescents think that their families are disorganized or disturbed, reporting more mental health issues and more behavior in the early period of adulthood.

Previous studies have shown that the chaotic family environment can negatively affect the social, emotional andeducational development of children. However, it is not clear whether these effects will last to adulthood.

Given that you can experience different ways in the same family, research to find ways to understand the perception of each individual about the chaos, and how it affects the mental health results in later life.

Research using data from early development research of twins, including twins from 1994 to 1996 in England and Wales. The researchers focus on twins to control genetic and general environments in families.

They analyzed the responses of twins at ages 9, 12, 14, and 16, revolving around how the children perceived family chaos.

The research model includes 4,732 twins of the same gender. The heterosexual twins are excluded to avoid jamming results due to gender differences.

At the age of 23, the twins have reported many different results including education, employment, income, use of addictive substances, mental health ...

The way siblings feel about family is different.

Research shows that teenagers believe that their families are more chaotic at the age of 16 with worse mental health results at the age of 23. These results include depression, anxiety and higher social opposition behavior, as well as lower autonomy.

It is important that these relationships are still important even after taking into account the socio -economic status of the family and the chaos of the family reported by parents.

The researchers found that siblings may have significant different perceptions of the family environment. A brothers and sisters can see that the family is noisy and disturbed than the other.

People who reported higher levels of family chaos showed more severe mental health problems, said study author Sophie von Stumm, a psychology professor at York University in Canada. This demonstrates a strong link between perceived chaos and later mental health.

The study also discovered the impact of family chaos at different ages. Although important links are found at age 9, 12 and 14, the strongest impact will be at the age of 16.

Von Stumm plans to investigate the specific age and underlying reasons for differences in siblings' perceptions of family chaos.

"It is possible that children who have experienced many adverse events in their early stages of their brothers and sisters, such as being injured or expelled, will develop a higher sensitivity before the chaos of the family, then the long -term effect on their mental health," she said.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/gia-dinh-hon-loan-de-khien-suc-khoe-tam-than-thanh-thieu-nien-bat-on-khi-truong-thanh-20240615145830207.htm