(PS5-39) Maternal and Youth Distress Tolerance: The Role of Child Sex and Clinical Profile

Background: Distress Tolerance is defined as the capacity to experience and withstand negative psychological states. Low distress tolerance (DT) plays a significant role in the emergence and maintenance of a number of clinical disorders, including anxiety and depression (Leyro, Zvolensky, & Bernstein, 2010). Existing research suggests that low distress tolerance in mothers is linked to/similarly observed in teen daughters (Daughters et al., 2014). This study can help determine how much parents, specifically mothers, affect their children's distress tolerance, especially if their children are diagnosed. Such findings were established in non-clinical samples but deserve replication in families with diagnostic youth.   

Methods: Participants were 333 youth (ages 9-17; Mage=13.1, SD=2.5; 56.1% female) and their mothers who completed procedures as part of a randomized clinical trial (n=272) or as part of a non-clinical comparison study (n=61). Child DT was measured using a behavioral task, the Distress Tolerance Test (Nock & Mendes, 2008), which uses a rigged card sorting task to determine youth's tendency to quit when frustrated. The outcome of interest is the number of cards a youth persists in following an initial training phase. P</span>articipants can achieve a max score of 44. Maternal DT was measured using the Distress Tolerance Scale (Simons & Gaher, 2005).  

Results: Two hierarchical regressions were conducted to determine if maternal DT predicted youth DT, with either child sex (male/female) or diagnostic status (clinical vs. non-clinical) entered as a moderator. The first model did not find significant relations between child DT and maternal DT (b= -0.97), child sex (b= -3.45), or their interaction (b= -0.26). The second model also did not find significant relations between child DT and maternal DT (b = -0.34), diagnostic status (b= 3.24), or their interaction (b = -0.28). Follow-up analysis showed substantial ceiling effects in child DTT scores, such that 59% of both clinical and non-clinical youth maxed out the test by reaching the 44th card.  

Discussion: We were unable to replicate findings that showed relations between maternal and teen DT. Ceiling effects of child DT assessment limited our ability to find effects. Reasons for why DTT may have failed to capture DT can be because the DTT is just a measure of how long someone can tolerate the unpleasant stimuli rather than their ability to regulate the emotions it stimulates. Further attention on measurement development for child DT may be warranted for clinical samples.