How Parent-Adolescent Conflicts Affect How Clinically Depressed Adolescents Disengage - Essay Example

However, for families who are already in distress, these conflicts may contribute to a continuous spiral of unhealthy dynamics through the adolescence stage and into adulthood (Sorkhabi, 2010). In order to comprehend how some of these families find themselves in a negative pattern of interactions, it is important to focus on the path of these parent-adolescent conflicts and how each individual’s perception and response during these conflicts is impacted by emotions experienced in prior conflicts.

Contrary to past beliefs, conflicts can serve as a growing tool in families (McKinney & Renk, 2011). It is often through conflicts that families learn to accommodate and understand the needs of their members across developmental stages. Conflicts can produce flexibility in family members who learn to compromise in order to reach an agreement. On the other hand, in families who experience conflict, but are not able to compromise or accommodate, the conflict then serves the purpose of aggravation and increased dysfunction (Lichtwarck-Aschoff et al., 2009).

This writer’s research problem will be focused on how parent-adolescent conflicts affect how clinically depressed adolescents disengage during these arguments, causing them to be emotionally rigid. The independent variable in this study will be parent-adolescent conflict, the dependent variable will be emotional rigidness, and the confrontational disengagement these adolescents experience during the conflict with parents will be the mediating variable. The sample population will consist of male and female adolescents who have been clinically diagnosed with depression and are between the ages of 13 and 19. 

According to the Dynamic Systems approach, adolescents solve conflicts differently, and such differences vary significantly based on the emotional development and conflict resolution skills adolescents have gained through experiences (Sorkhabi, 2010). 

Adolescents who experience frequent parent-adolescent conflicts have more rigidity in their emotions when dealing with conflict outside their relationship with their parents (Lichtwarck-Aschoff et al., 2009; Crockett, Brown, Russell, & Shen, 2007).  These adolescents tend to experience the same emotions across conflicts, regardless of the type or the outcome of the conflict (McKinney & Renk, 2011; Thelen & Ulrich, 1991).