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Resilience and rejection sensitivity mediate long-term outcomes of parental divorce

DOI:10.1007/s00787-016-0893-7
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Violetta Schaan at FernUniversität in Hagen
Violetta Schaan
Claus Vögele at University of Luxembourg
Claus Vögele
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Abstract

Introduction: Increasing divorce rates leave more and more children to deal with the separation of their parents. Recent research suggests that children of divorced parents more often experience psychological and physical symptoms than children of non-divorced parents. The processes that mediate the relationship between parental divorce and ill-health, however, are still elusive. The current study investigated the mediating role of psychological factors such as resilience and rejection sensitivity on the long-term consequences of parental divorce in young adults. Methods: One hundred and ninety-nine participants (mean age 22.3 years) completed an online survey including measures of mental health, childhood trauma, resilience and rejection sensitivity. Results: Participants with divorced parents (33%) reported increased levels of psychological symptoms, childhood trauma, rejection sensitivity and lower levels of resilience. The association between parental divorce and mental health was fully mediated by resilience, rejection sensitivity and childhood trauma. The mediation model explained up to 44% of the total variance in mental health symptoms. Discussion: Resilience and rejection sensitivity are crucial factors for successful coping with the experience of parental separation. Prevention programs that help to boost children’s resilience might help to reduce the long-term effects of parental divorce on their attachment style (e.g. rejection sensitivity), thereby improving their mental health on the long run. Furthermore, the results call for parental awareness and counseling to target and reduce the observed increased level of childhood trauma. Limitations concern the cross-sectional and retrospective design of the study.
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Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry (2016) 25:1267–1269
DOI 10.1007/s00787-016-0893-7
BRIEF REPORT
Resilience and rejection sensitivity mediate long‑term outcomes
of parental divorce
Violetta K. Schaan1 · Claus Vögele1
Received: 6 March 2016 / Accepted: 19 July 2016 / Published online: 26 July 2016
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016
the results call for parental awareness and counseling to tar-
get and reduce the observed increased level of childhood
trauma. Limitations concern the cross-sectional and retro-
spective design of the study.
Keywords Parental divorce · Mental health · Resilience ·
Rejection sensitivity · Childhood trauma
Introduction
Over the last decades, the number of divorces has
increased considerably. The experience of parental divorce
is a major life event that can easily result in emotional
(sometimes traumatic) stress to the child concerned and,
therefore, mental and physical ill-health (e.g., [1]). Paren-
tal divorce can enhance the risk for children to develop
insecure attachment styles [2], which are related to physi-
cal and psychological health problems [3]. Insecure attach-
ment styles have been shown to be related to rejection
sensitivity, a disposition that reflects the tendency “to
anxiously expect, readily perceive and intensely react to
rejection” [4]. Rejection sensitivity is a key mediator for
many mental disorders such as depression [5] and border-
line personality disorder, and is used as a proxy for inse-
cure attachment in this study [6]. Protective mental health
factors, e.g., personal resilience, not only help children to
cope successfully with stressful events such as parental
divorce but can also be negatively shaped by these events
[7]. The aims of this study were (1) to retrospectively
investigate differences in levels of resilience and rejec-
tion sensitivity between the offspring of divorced and non-
divorced parents and (2) to examine whether such differ-
ences are associated with psychological problems in later
life (mediation hypothesis).
Abstract Increasing divorce rates leave more and more
children to deal with the separation of their parents. Recent
research suggests that children of divorced parents more
often experience psychological and physical symptoms
than children of non-divorced parents. The processes that
mediate the relationship between parental divorce and ill-
health, however, are still elusive. This study investigated the
mediating role of psychological factors such as resilience
and rejection sensitivity on the long-term consequences
of parental divorce in young adults. One hundred and
ninety-nine participants (mean age 22.3 years) completed
an online survey, including measures of mental health,
childhood trauma, resilience, and rejection sensitivity. Par-
ticipants with divorced parents (33 %) reported increased
levels of psychological symptoms, childhood trauma, rejec-
tion sensitivity, and lower levels of resilience. The associa-
tion between parental divorce and mental health was fully
mediated by resilience, rejection sensitivity, and childhood
trauma. The mediation model explained up to 44 % of the
total variance in mental health symptoms. Resilience and
rejection sensitivity are crucial factors for successful cop-
ing with the experience of parental separation. Prevention
programs that help to boost children’s resilience might
help to reduce the long-term effects of parental divorce on
their attachment style (e.g., rejection sensitivity), thereby
improving their mental health on the long run. Furthermore,
* Violetta K. Schaan
violetta.schaan@uni.lu
Claus Vögele
claus.voegele@uni.lu
1 Research Unit INSIDE, Institute for Health and Behavior,
University of Luxembourg, Campus Belval-Maison
des Sciences Humaines 11, Porte des Sciences,
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
1268 Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry (2016) 25:1267–1269
1 3
Methods
Questionnaires
Rejection sensitivity was measured using the short version
of the Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire as validated by
Schulze et al. [8] (α = 0.77). Resilience was assessed with the
13-item inventory as validated by Leppert et al. [9] (α = 0.90).
As parental divorce can possibly be associated with subse-
quent traumatic experiences, we assessed early life adversities
using the German-version of the Childhood Trauma Question-
naire (α = 0.90). Mental health problems in terms of depres-
sion and anxiety-related symptoms were measured using the
Hopkins Symptoms Checklist 25 (HSCL-25; α = 0.93).
Sample and general procedure
An online questionnaire was created on sociesurvey.de and
distributed via Facebook and the university’s student plat-
form. Volunteers gave online informed consent before start-
ing the survey. Ethics approval was obtained for the study
design from the appropriate University Ethics Panel.
Thirteen out of 199 participants were excluded from
further analysis because of (a) their wish to have their data
deleted (N = 1), (b) parents deceased (N = 6), (c) extreme
values on the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (>2.5 SDs
above the mean; N = 5) or (d) divorce of parents during
adulthood (participant >18 years at the time of divorce;
N = 1).
The majority of participants were living in Germany
(58.9 %) or Luxembourg (34.5 %). Participants’ mean age was
22.30 years (SD = 3.75) with 85.4 % of participants being
female. Sixty-two participants (33 %) experienced the divorce
of their parents at an average age of 7.75 years (SD = 5.25).
Results
Rejection sensitivity
To test the hypothesis that participants with divorced parents
show higher rejection sensitivity than participants with non-
divorced parents, a Welch test was calculated. Participants
with divorced parents had significantly higher rejection sen-
sitivity levels (M = 11.35, SD = 4.73) than participants who
did not experience the divorce of their parents [M = 9.86,
SD = 3.82; t(102.224) = 4.613, p = 0.03, d = 0.35].
Resilience
Participants with divorced parents had significant lower
resilience (M = 5.08, SD = 0.94) compared with those par-
ticipants who did not experience the divorce of their parents
[M = 5.41, SD = 0.94; t(124.117) = 5.23, p = 0.024,
d = 0.35].
Childhood trauma
Participants who experienced parental divorce scored sig-
nificantly higher on the CTQ (M = 8.03, SD = 2.00) than
participants whose parents still lived together [M = 6.59,
SD = 2.00; t(126.788) = 20.62, p < 0.001; d = 0.72].
Mental health
Groups differed significantly on the global HSCL score
[participants with divorced parents: M = 1.91, SD = 0.52;
participants with non-divorced parents: M = 1.73,
SD = 0.53; t(1123.749) = 4.609, p = 0.034, d = 0.34].
To test the main hypothesis that differences in resilience
and rejection sensitivity account for differences in mental
health problems between participants with divorced and par-
ticipants with parents living together a bootstrapping proce-
dure was used (see Fig. 1). Resilience, rejection sensitivity,
and childhood trauma were entered as mediators between
condition (i.e., divorced parents vs. non-divorced parents)
and mental health (global HSCL) with n = 10000 resamples
[10]. The results showed that rejection sensitivity, resilience,
and childhood trauma mediated the effect of parental divorce
on mental health, when using bias-corrected and accelerated
95 % bootstrap confidence intervals (CIs) for the indirect
effect of condition on mental health (see Table 1).
Fig. 1 Illustration of the bootstrapping analysis. Paths are represented
using the following standardized coefficients: a1, a2, and a3 indicate
the coefficients from condition (divorce vs. no divorce of the parents)
to each mediator (i.e., rejection sensitivity, resilience and childhood
trauma), respectively; b1, b2, and b3 are the respective coefficients
from the mediators (i.e., rejection sensitivity, resilience and childhood
trauma) to mental health symptoms; c is the coefficient that indicates
the total effects of condition on mental health symptoms without con-
trolling for the mediators and c’ reflects the condition-to-mental health
symptoms path controlling for the mediators (direct effect). * p < 0.05,
** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001
1269Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry (2016) 25:1267–1269
1 3
Discussion
The present results confirm previous findings of reduced
psychological well-being in young adults who experienced
the divorce of their parents during childhood, compared
with those without this experience. We observed higher
scores on the childhood trauma scale, increased rejec-
tion sensitivity and reduced resilience in the offspring of
divorced parents compared with those of non-divorced
parents. The results suggest a mediating role of resilience,
rejection sensitivity, and childhood trauma for the asso-
ciation between the experience of parental divorce and
increased levels of anxiety and depression. The media-
tion model explained up to 44 % of the total variance in
mental health symptoms. Prevention programs focusing
on increasing resilience might enable children to cope bet-
ter with the experience of their parents’ divorce, thereby
preventing the development of long-term mental health
problems. Not only resilience, however, but also rejection
sensitivity may be an important target for prevention and
intervention. By helping children to understand and cope
with the separation of their parents, children might be given
the tools to stay healthy without developing relationship
anxiety. The high levels of childhood trauma highlight the
need for more in-depth and longitudinal research. Parents
might be overwhelmed with the situation themselves and
may, therefore, not be able to support their child. Provid-
ing help to parents and children at an early stage during
the divorce process might help to stall the development of
symptoms, and to prevent unfavorable long-term changes
in attachment styles and resilience. Future research should
focus on specific types of resilience that might be beneficial
for children when facing parental divorce. In addition, lon-
gitudinal studies could help to rule out reversed causality,
i.e., higher divorce prevalence in families with lower levels
of mental health and resilience.
Limitations of this study concern its cross-sectional
design and the preponderance of students and female
participants, which restricts the generalization of the results
to the general population. The retrospective design pre-
cludes any conclusions on causality. In addition, selection
bias might have affected the results.
Conflict of interest On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author
states that there is no conflict of interest.
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Table 1 Results of the
mediation analysis
LLCI lower limit 95 % confidence interval, UCLI upper limit 95 % confidence interval, RS rejection sensi-
tivity
Predictors Outcome variable Model coefficients Indirect effects
βs.e. t p Effect (SE) LLCI–UCLI
Divorce Health 0.331 0.155 2.14 0.03
Divorce CTQ 0.665 0.148 4.48 <0.001
Divorce RS 0.355 0.154 2.303 0.02
Divorce Resilience −0.350 0.154 −2.27 0.02
Divorce Health −0.042 0.125 −0.338 0.736
CTQ 0.232 0.063 0.367 <0.001 0.154 (0.055) 0.06–0.27
RS 0.213 0.064 3.320 0.001 0.076 (0.041) 0.01–17
Resilience −0.409 0.066 −6.222 <0.001 0.143 (0.068) 0.02–0.29
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Leerlinge met matige intellektuele disfunksie (MID) is 'n kohort leerlinge wie se hoë aggressievlakke onderrig in skole ernstig bemoeilik. Dergelike leerlinge het 'n gemiddelde intelligensiekwosiënt (IK) van 55 tot 70 en, vergeleke met leerlinge sonder MID, het hul 'n agterstand in verstandelike ontwikkeling van twee tot agt jaar. Hierdie leerlinge het 'n vier keer hoër risiko om aggressiewe gedragsuitvalle te openbaar, wat vir onderwysers en belanghebbendes groot uitdagings bied. Die doel van hierdie studie was om te bepaal of, en indien wel, in watter mate, die ouerskapspraktyke van die ouers van dergelike leerlinge bydra tot hulle aggressiewe gedragsuitvalle. Die hoofbevinding van hierdie studie is dat die aggressiewe gedragsuitvalle in die skool 'n simptoom is van dieperliggende probleme, wat die gevolg is van 'n sameloop van negatiewe ouerskapspraktyke, emosionele verwaarlosing en ingeperkte vermoëns van leerlinge met MID om uitdagings toepaslik te hanteer. Negatiewe ouerskapspraktyke het die volgende ingesluit: aggressiewe gedrag, onbetrokkenheid, permissiewe praktyke, gebrekkige kommunikasie en inkonsekwente dissipline met min ondersteuning, warmte en empatie. Die leerlinge het gevoel dat hulle ouers emosioneel en fisies afwesig was, wat gelei het tot 'n gevoel van emosionele verwaarlosing, verwerping, verlies en 'n gebrek aan ondersteuning. Opeengestapelde ("accumulative") negatiewe faktore soos gesinsverbrokkeling en problematiese binding het ook bygedra tot hulle aggressiewe gedragsuitvalle. Hierdie leerlinge het nie die ondersteuning gehad om uitdagende gebeure te verwerk nie - hulle moes dit self verwerk en is met onverwerkte emosies aan hul lot oorgelaat.
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Synaptic rewiring of stress-sensitive neurons by early-life experience: A mechanism for resilience?
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Full-text available
  • Jan 2015
Genes and environment interact to influence cognitive and emotional functions throughout life. Early-life experiences in particular contribute to vulnerability or resilience to a number of emotional and cognitive illnesses in humans. In rodents, early-life experiences directly lead to resilience or vulnerability to stress later in life, and influence the development of cognitive and emotional deficits. The mechanisms for the enduring effects of early-life experiences on cognitive and emotional outcomes are not completely understood. Here, we present emerging information supporting experience-dependent modulation of the number and efficacy of synaptic inputs onto stress-sensitive neurons. This synaptic 'rewiring', in turn, may influence the expression of crucial neuronal genes. The persistent changes in gene expression in resilient versus vulnerable rodent models are likely maintained via epigenetic mechanisms. Thus, early-life experience may generate resilience by altering synaptic input to neurons, which informs them to modulate their epigenetic machinery.
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An Attachment Perspective on Psychopathology
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  • Feb 2012
In recent years, attachment theory, which was originally formulated to describe and explain infant-parent emotional bonding, has been applied to the study of adolescent and adult romantic relationships and then to the study of psychological processes, such as interpersonal functioning, emotion regulation, coping with stress, and mental health. In this paper, we offer a brief overview of the attachment perspective on psychopathology. Following a brief account of attachment theory, we go on to explain how the study of individual differences in adult attachment intersects with the study of psychopathology. Specifically, we review research findings showing that attachment insecurity is a major contributor to mental disorders, and that the enhancement of attachment security can facilitate amelioration of psychopathology.
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Parental divorce and adult children's attachment representations and marital status
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The purpose of this study was to explore adult attachment as a means of understanding the intergenerational transmission of divorce, that is, the propensity for the children of divorce to end their own marriages. Participants included 157 couples assessed 3 months prior to their weddings and 6 years later. Participants completed the Adult Attachment Interview and questionnaires about their relationships, and were videotaped with their partners in a couple interaction task. Results indicated that, in this sample, adult children of divorce were not more likely to divorce within the first 6 years of marriage. However, parental divorce increased the likelihood of having an insecure adult attachment status. For women, age at the time of their parents' divorce was related to adult attachment status, and the influence on attachment representations may be more enduring. Among adult children of divorce, those who were classified as secure in their attachment representations were less likely to divorce in the early years of marriage than insecure participants.
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Parental Divorce and the Well-Being of Children: A Meta-Analysis
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  • Jul 1991
This meta-analysis involved 92 studies that compared children living in divorced single-parent families with children living in continuously intact families on measures of well-being. Children of divorce scored lower than children in intact families across a variety of outcomes, with the median effect size being .14 of a standard deviation. For some outcomes, methodologically sophisticated studies yielded weaker effect sizes than did other studies. In addition, for some outcomes, more recent studies yielded weaker effect sizes than did studies carried out during earlier decades. Some support was found for theoretical perspectives emphasizing parental absence and economic disadvantage, but the most consistent support was found for a family conflict perspective.
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Implications of Rejection Sensitivity for Intimate Relationships
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  • Jun 1996
People who are sensitive to social rejection tend to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and overreact to it. This article shows that this cognitive-affective processing disposition undermines intimate relationships. Study 1 describes a measure that operationalizes the anxious-expectations component of rejection sensitivity. Study 2 provides experimental evidence that people who anxiously expect rejection readily perceive intentional rejection in the ambiguous behavior of others. Study 3 shows that people who enter romantic relationships with anxious expectations of rejection readily perceive intentional rejection in the insensitive behavior of their new partners. Study 4 demonstrates that rejection-sensitive people and their romantic partners are dissatisfied with their relationships. Rejection-sensitive men's jealousy and rejection-sensitive women's hostility and diminished supportiveness help explain their partners' dissatisfaction.
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Rejection Sensitivity and Depressive Symptoms in Women
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It is proposed that interpersonal loss that communicates rejection increases the risk for depression specifically in individuals who not only expect rejection but are also concerned about preventing it. Accordingly, the role of rejection sensitivity (RS)—the disposition to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and overreact to rejection—in women’s depressive reactions to rejection by a romantic partner was examined. A 6-month longitudinal study of college women revealed that women high in RS compared with those who are low became more depressed when they experienced a partner-initiated breakup but not when they experienced a self-initiated or mutually initiated breakup. By contrast, RS was not associated with increased depression in response to failing to achieve an academic goal. These results support the view that depression in high-RS women is a reaction to a loss in a valued goal domain, that is, failure to prevent rejection in an important relationship.
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SPSS and SAS Procedures for Estimating Indirect Effects in Simple Mediation Models
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  • Dec 2004
Researchers often conduct mediation analysis in order to indirectly assess the effect of a proposed cause on some outcome through a proposed mediator. The utility of mediation analysis stems from its ability to go beyond the merely descriptive to a more functional understanding of the relationships among variables. A necessary component of mediation is a statistically and practically significant indirect effect. Although mediation hypotheses are frequently explored in psychological research, formal significance tests of indirect effects are rarely conducted. After a brief overview of mediation, we argue the importance of directly testing the significance of indirect effects and provide SPSS and SAS macros that facilitate estimation of the indirect effect with a normal theory approach and a bootstrap approach to obtaining confidence intervals, as well as the traditional approach advocated by Baron and Kenny (1986). We hope that this discussion and the macros will enhance the frequency of formal mediation tests in the psychology literature. Electronic copies of these macros may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society's Web archive at www.psychonomic.org/archive/.
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An expectancy-value model of personality diathesis for depression: rejection sensitivity and depression in women
  • Jan 2001
  • Pers Soc Psychol Bull
  • 868-877
  • O Ayduk
  • G Downey
  • M Kim
Ayduk O, Downey G, Kim M (2001) An expectancy-value model of personality diathesis for depression: rejection sensitivity and depression in women. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 27:868-877