Mothers and fathers do not accurately report each other's psychopathology

It is unclear whether information obtained from a one parent can be used to infer the other parent's history of psychopathology. Two hundred and one parental dyads were asked to complete psychiatric interviews. Based on maternal report, non-participating husbands/ fathers had higher rates than...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMental illness Vol. 4; no. 2; pp. e14 - 72
Main Authors Ross, Randal G, Hunter, Sharon K, Zerbe, Gary O, Hanna, Kate
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Italy Hindawi Limited 26.07.2012
PAGEPress Publications
Hindawi - Emerald Publishing
Subjects
Father
Psychopathology
psychopathology
father
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Summary:It is unclear whether information obtained from a one parent can be used to infer the other parent's history of psychopathology. Two hundred and one parental dyads were asked to complete psychiatric interviews. Based on maternal report, non-participating husbands/ fathers had higher rates than participating fathers of psychiatric illness. For fathers who did participate, maternal report did not match direct interview of paternal psychopathology with sensitivities less than 0.40 and positive predictive values of 0.33 to 0.74. Psychopathology may be over-represented among fathers who do not participate in research. Mother report of paternal symptoms is not an effective proxy. Alternative methods need to be developed to: i) improve father participation or ii) identify psychiatric status in fathers who do not participate in research projects.
Bibliography:Conflict of interests: the authors report no conflicts of interests.
Funding: this work was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health (MH56539, MH068582, and MH086383).
ISSN:2036-7457
2036-7465
2036-7465
DOI:10.4081/mi.2012.e14