Family relations and cognitive distortions in depressive adolescents and their parents

In this study, depressive adolescents and their parents were investigated in terms of parent-adolescent conflict, cognitive distortions/beliefs concerning family relations and dysfunctional attitudes about themselves. Beck Depression Inventory, Parent-Adolescent Relationship Questionnaire's subscales of Global Distress and Cognitions/ Beliefs and Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale were administered to 123 "depressed" and "non-depressed" adolescents and to their mothers (n = 109) and fathers (n = 87). Depressive adolescents reported more parent-adolescents conflict and cognitive distortions like ruination and unfairness, and dysfunctional attitudes. Non-depressive adolescents expressed more perfectionistic beliefs with their relations with their parents. Parents of depressive adolescents reported more depression and more conflict with their as compared to the parents of non-depressive adolescents. Significant positive correlations were found between adolescents', mothers' and fathers' depression, conflict, distorted beliefs about family relations and positive correlations were found between parents about dysfunctional attitudes. Adolescents' beliefs that their lives will be ruined by their parents' restrictions, global distress with their parents and dysfunctional attitude about themselves, mothers' depression, self-blame for their children's problems and low perfectionistic expectations for their children, fathers' reports of global distress with their children appeared as the variables that discriminated depressed adolescents from the non-depressed ones.