Finding Benefits in Negative Events: Growth, Emotional Contagion, and Reactivity in the Children of Ill Parents

While the limited body of work examining the child response to parental illness has focused upon the detrimental effects of this life experience, other literature suggests that some individuals perceive growth as a result of negative events. Growth following negative experiences has been shown to predict lower depression and greater wellbeing. In addition, reactivity to others' distress may make individuals more vulnerable to internalizing symptoms and decreased quality of life in the face of a negative event. The current study builds on prior work by exploring the impact of perceived growth, emotional contagion, and reactivity on wellbeing in the college-age children of ill parents. Participants included a total of 71 undergraduates with a parent who suffered from a non-psychological illness while they were growing up. Each participant completed self-report measures to assess perceived growth, emotional contagion, internalizing symptoms, and life satisfaction. Participants also provided information about parental illness characteristics as well as family quality of life variables. Participants then watched a series of emotion-eliciting film clips, during which their pulse rate and finger temperature were recorded. Participants reported their physiological reactivity and emotional experience before and after each film clip. Contrary to the hypotheses, growth and emotional contagion were not correlated with participant depression, anxiety, and life satisfaction. With the exception of positive versus negative ratings, reactivity was also not correlated with the outcome variables. However, several parental illness characteristics were significantly associated with participant depression, anxiety, and life satisfaction. Specifically, parental involvement, degree of current stress due to parental illness, and recovery status of ill parent were associated with participant depression. Frequency of symptoms and parental involvement were significantly associated with participant anxiety, while familial support, parental involvement, and degree of current stress due to parental illness were correlated with participant life satisfaction. Further, a number of parental illness characteristics (event centrality, impact of illness, illness severity, degree of stress at illness onset, frequency of symptoms, hospitalizations, and incapacitation) were correlated with participant growth. These findings contribute to the limited body of literature exploring the child experience of parental illness and have implications for intervention planning in this vulnerable population.