Exploring the impact of parental attachment styles on adolescent depression: A longitudinal study

Abstract

This detailed literature review focuses on the complex facets of attachment theory some of which extend across early childhood, adolescence and mental health and emotional development. Exploration opens with the classic works of Bowlby and Ainsworth, serving as a basis for explanation, regarding attachment styles and the extent to which they impact the future life stage development. The focusing of attachment in pre-adolescence, especially on its tie to emotion regulation and psychopathology, is studied through longitudinal studies, giving us the chance to go deeper into the interaction between the environment in which one grows up and the mental balance. There was further research which also covered intergenerational transmission of attachment patterns, and it was demonstrated by Dagan and Sagi-Schwartz with the research they did on the offspring of holocaust survivors who were adolescents at the time. Supporting this is research done by Allen and colleagues who reiterate the significance of attachment in emotion regulation indicating that it is a dynamic process that changes as an adolescent grows. The review comprises empirical studies that focus on the reciprocating relationship between adverse attachment and internalizing as well as the externalizing problem behaviors. The bidirectional influences between attachment security and psychopathology are explained in the review. The contribution of gender to attachment, which is argued by Chen and Kaplan, epitomizes the sophisticated dimension of the subject. Parental mentalization, sexual harassment, and the age of adolescence in the research blow up the extent of the contextual variables that have an impact on the outcomes of attachment. Moreover, a multifaceted analysis of Zeeger and colleagues on the parental mentalization and sensitivity as initiators of infant-parent attachment is helpful for our view of the role that parental attention plays in infant development. In the abstract, the author finally points out the importance of attachment at all stages of human development as well as its practical side, that is mental health treatment.