Objective: This review examines children's adjustment to marital crisis from behavioral and emotional perspective so as to identify coping behavior and to show negative impact that marital conflict has on children. Methods: This review examines the evidence that parental divorce affects children's mental health. It begins by reviewing: 1) the different definitions of children's mental health that are used in the divorce literature; 2) the divorce rate in the general population; 3) surveys of the number of children of divorced parents seeking psychiatric help; and 4) the effects of divorce on children's mental health. The duration of the child's maladjustment to the divorce as compared to the degree of maladjustment of children from non-divorced parents is also described. Results: There were 34 American, 13 Australian, 2 Canadian and 3 research articles from the United Kingdom cited in this study. Defining children's adjustment requires collecting data from multiple sources - children, parents and teachers. Increasingly a number of studies indicate that family structure may not the be the most reliable predictor of children's adjustment. Not all studies have found that parental divorce predicts children's general adjustment, instead it would appear that the presence of on-going inter-parent conflict may be the active factor that is causing stress to the children. Conclusion: The experience of parental divorce or separation affects the child's adjustment. Even though children of divorced parents have been found to have more adjustment problems compared to children of non-divorced parents, these differences are not large. Inter-parental conflict has been identified as a stronger predictor of children's adjustment as compared to the parental divorced per se. The review ends with conclusions on the findings along with recommendations on what needs further research.
Human ; Male ; Female ; Child ; SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT ; LIFE CHANGE EVENTS ; DIVORCE ; CHILD

Objective: This study was conducted to ascertain some of the factors like temperament and goodness of fit as predictors of problem-solving styles. Methods: A survey of 129 female secondary school students was conducted. The "Goodness-of-Fit" hypothesis i.e. interactions between what children expect of their peers and what behaviours theirs peers actually have predict problem solving style, was qualitatively evaluated. Results: Aggressive problems-solving styles were more frequently used when there were greater differences between the girl's expectations of her classmate's adaptive-withdrawal and moody behaviours, versus their actual behaviour. Conclusion: When the student and her classmates aere not agreeing on how each should behave, there was a greater potential for the student to use more aggressive methods to solve disputes.
Human ; Female ; Adolescent ; PROBLEM SOLVING ; CONFLICT (PSYCHOLOGY) ; ADOLESCENT

Objective: Numerous studies indicate that interpersonal and environmental factors have a role in creating depressive symptoms in children. The objective of the study was to find out how temperament, negative life events, locus of control and social support predicted children's depression. Method: In this study, 243 female secondary school students were surveyed to ascertain how these factors predicted depressive symptoms. Results: The results of the analysis yield several conclusions. First, that not all aspects of temperament predict depression, the strongest seems to be mood. Second, that how upset a child is with negative events is a stronger predictor of depression compared with the total number of negative events. Third, locus of control predicts depression and fourth, social support from friends and parents also predicts depression. Conclusion: However when all the above factors are taken in to account, locus of control, extent of upsetness with the events and social support from friends are stronger predictors, relative to the other factors.