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. 2024 Apr 8:15:1366366.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1366366. eCollection 2024.

Empathy and psychopathology in children and adolescents: the role of parental mental illness and emotion regulation

Arleta A Luczejko  1 , Klara Hagelweide  2 , Rudolf Stark  3 , Sarah Weigelt  2 , Hanna Christiansen  4 , Meinhard Kieser  5 , Kathleen Otto  6 , Corinna Reck  7 , Ricarda Steinmayr  8 , Linda Wirthwein  8 , Anna-Lena Zietlow  9 , Christina Schwenck  1 ; COMPARE-family research group
Collaborators, Affiliations

Empathy and psychopathology in children and adolescents: the role of parental mental illness and emotion regulation

Arleta A Luczejko et al. Front Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Objective: Although empathy is known to be a strength, recent studies suggest that empathy can be a risk factor for psychopathology under certain conditions in children. This study examines parental mental illness as such a condition. Further, it aims to investigate whether maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) mediates the relationship between empathy and psychopathological symptoms of children.

Methods: Participants were 100 children of parents with a mental illness (55% female) and 87 children of parents without a mental illness (50% female) aged 6 - 16 years and their parents.

Results: Greater cognitive empathy was related to more psychopathological symptoms in COPMI, but not in COPWMI. In addition, in COPMI maladaptive ER mediated this relationship. In contrast, greater affective empathy was associated with more psychopathological symptoms regardless of whether parents had a mental illness.

Conclusion: Our findings highlight the importance of implementing preventive programs for COPMI that specifically target the reduction of maladaptive ER.

Keywords: children of parents with mental illness; emotion regulation; empathy; parents with mental illness; transgenerational transmission of mental disorders.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Diagram of proposed moderation model of the relationship between empathy and psychopathology.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Diagram of proposed mediation model of the relationship between empathy and psychopathology.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Model of affective empathy as a predictor of internalizing symptoms, mediated by maladaptive ER strategies. The confidence interval for the indirect effect is a BCa bootstrapped CI based on 5000 samples.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Model of affective empathy as a predictor of externalizing symptoms, mediated by maladaptive ER strategies. The confidence interval for the indirect effect is a BCa bootstrapped CI based on 5000 samples.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Model of cognitive empathy as a predictor of internalizing symptoms, mediated by maladaptive ER strategies. The confidence interval for the indirect effect is a BCa bootstrapped CI based on 5000 samples.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Model of cognitive empathy as a predictor of externalizing symptoms, mediated by maladaptive ER strategies. The confidence interval for the indirect effect is a BCa bootstrapped CI based on 5000 samples.
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