Date of Award

5-2025

Document Type

Project

Degree Name

Master of Social Work

Department

School of Social Work

First Reader/Committee Chair

Lim, Caroline

Abstract

Background: Parental mental illness greatly impacts a child’s development by posing great risks to their physical and mental health, academic success, and overall functioning (Naughton et al., 2019; Adjej et al., 2023). It remains clear that exposure to parental mental illness has short-term implications. However, long-term impacts on offspring while entering and managing adulthood has not been thoroughly examined. Objective: This longitudinal study proposes to determine the effects of parental mental illness on life functioning of adult offspring at baseline and then occur every two years over the course of eight years. Method: Quantitative data will be collected from 120 participants using convenience sampling method from community mental health agencies across Southern California. The WHO Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 (World Health Organization, 2012) will be used to gather data to measure daily functioning across major life domains. To measure exposure to parental mental illness, participants will be asked to provide information on the parent who was diagnosed, when the diagnosis occurred, and whether the participant resided with the affected parent during their formative years (from birth to 8 years old). Bivariate analysis will be performed to examine the relationship between exposure to parental mental illness and the level of functioning of adult offspring.

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