(PS12-47) Socioeconomic Status as a Moderator of Relations Between Family Conflict and General Psychopathology in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study

Socioeconomic Status as a Moderator of Relations between Family Conflict and General Psychopathology in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study 

Jolee A. Sloss & Adrienne L. Romer 

Background: A general psychopathology “p-factor” captures shared variation (i.e., comorbidity and severity) across internalizing, externalizing, and thought disorder categories. Identifying environmental factors which contribute to the p-factor may be important for determining transdiagnostic risk markers of youth psychopathology. One environmental factor which may contribute to the p-factor is family conflict, defined as family environment with frequent disagreement and conflict between members and lower levels of familial organization. Prior research has shown that children with comorbid internalizing and externalizing disorders, but not internalizing or externalizing disorders alone, reported greater family conflict than typically developing youth (Flores et al., 2014). family conflict also is significantly associated with socioeconomic status (SES), with adolescents living in higher-level SES environments reporting less familial conflict than those in lower-level SES environments (Georgiades et al., 2008; Xiaowei et al., 2012). However, associations between family conflict, SES, and the p-factor have not yet been studied in youth, which may be particularly important for identifying family environment risk factors of transdiagnostic psychopathology.  

Methods: In 9,849 preadolescents (aged 9-10) from the baseline wave of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, we conducted regression analyses to examine relations between family conflict (i.e., youth-reported Family Environment Conflict subscale total scores) and p-factor scores previously calculated from higher-order confirmatory factor models of Child Behavior Checklist items (Romer et al., 2023). We then examined whether SES (i.e., parent-reported combined 12-month family income) moderated the relation between family conflict and p-factor scores. Covariates included sex and age. We randomly selected one sibling per family.  

Results: First, we found that higher family conflict was associated with higher p-factor scores (Std. B=.15, p< .001) controlling for sex and age. Second, we found that SES significantly moderated the relation between family conflict and p-factor scores (Std. B=-.03) such that preadolescents with lower SES and higher family conflict had the highest p-factor scores (Std. B=.15), followed by those with mean (Std. B=.13) and high levels of SES (Std. B=.10) (all p< .001).  

Conclusions: Results suggest that youth from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who experience high family conflict may be particularly vulnerable to general psychopathology. Interventions which target the family environment (e.g., increasing healthy family dynamics and reducing conflict), especially in low SES families, may be associated with better transdiagnostic outcomes.