A study of the relationship between maternal physiological risk factors, maternal psychosocial risk factors, prenatal risk factors and adolescent psycholpathology

The purpose of this study was to investigate the question: Is psychopathology in the adolescent related to the prevalence of maternal physiological risk factors, maternal psychosocial risk factors, and perinatal risk factors? The investigator recruited 50 mother-adolescent dyads to participate in an investigation which was a descriptive, non-experimental survey design, conducted retrospectively. Mother-adolescent dyads were assigned to either Group I or Group II dependent upon whether the adolescents' scores on the Youth Self-Report Form placed them in the normal or abnormal range. All mothers were asked to complete the Socioeconomic Data Sheet, evaluating demographic data for each dyad; the Stress During Pregnancy Questionnaire, evaluating maternal psychosocial stress during pregnancy; the Maternal Health Assessment Interview Schedule, evaluating maternal physiological risk factors occurring during pregnancy; and the Perinatal Health Assessment Interview Schedule, evaluating the health of the adolescent at the time of his birth and during the neonatal period. A T-test failed to differentiate between Groups I and II on the prevalence of maternal physiological risk factors; data analysis by Mann-Whitney U-test indicated that the mothers of adolescents with psychopathology experienced more psychosocial risk factors than adolescents without psychopathology. A T-test also revealed that adolescents with psychopathology experienced more perinatal risk factors than adolescents without psychopathology. The other research questions were not statistically significant. Among Group I adolescents, there was no difference in the prevalence in the three risk factors: maternal physiological risk factors, maternal psychosocial risk factors, and perinatal risk factors. Performance of MANOVA did not support the research hypothesis that race/ethnicity was associated with the prevalence of risk factors among the Group I adolescents. The level of significance for all the data analysis was set at p ≤ .05.