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Webinar: Parental and child mental health and intimate partner violence

    This webinar is in the past.

    27 June 2023, 17:00 – 18:30 BST, Zoom

    VISION director, Professor Gene Feder, led the webinar, Interrelationships between parental mental health, intimate partner violence and child mental health – implications for practice, with Dr Shabeer Syed and Dr Claire Powell on behalf of the NIHR Children and Families Policy Research Unit.

    They presented findings from a mixed methods study that seeks to improve responses to families affected by intimate partner violence (IPV) and parents and children’s mental health problems.

    Then, they presented preliminary findings on the relationship between parental IPV and a range of clinically relevant adversity and mental health-related indicators (www.acesinehrs.com) in anonymised health records from parents and children presenting to GPs, A&E and hospital admissions between one year before and five years after birth.

    Their research shows that 1 in 5 (20%) families experienced IPV, although only 1 in 50 (2%) had IPV recorded in the GP record.  Recording of other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) was better, with 1 in 2 (53.4%) families having at least one recorded in the early life course. Compared to families without ACEs, families with ACEs had a higher risk of parental IPV, especially when at least one parent and child had recorded a mental health problem. Gene will discuss the implications of these findings for national guidance on supporting families experiencing IPV and mental health problems, articulating how data already within medical records can help identify those families. 

    For further information please see: Interrelationships between parental mental health, intimate partner violence and child mental health – implications for practice – ACAMH

    Photo by Sebastián León Prado on Unsplash

    Relationship quality and family formation in Europe

      The increase in cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing across Europe has raised questions about who still marries either before or after having a child. Although prior studies have addressed the sequence of marriage and childbearing, few have examined the role of relationship quality in these transitions. Here we employ a cross-national perspective to study the association between relationship quality and marriage and/or first birth within cohabitation. Using the Generations and Gender Survey and UK Household Longitudinal Study, we study seven European countries (Austria, France, Hungary, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and UK).

      We employ competing risk hazard models to follow respondents as they 1) transition from cohabitation into marriage or conception (or separation); 2) transition to marriage (or separation) after having a birth within cohabitation.

      Results show that cohabitors with higher relationship quality are more marriage prone than those in lower quality relationships in Austria, France, Hungary, and the UK, but not in the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Instead, higher relationship quality is associated with higher conception risks in cohabitation in Sweden. After childbearing, we find a positive association between relationship quality and marriage among cohabiting parents in the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. These results suggest that marriage is still important for couples with higher quality relationships; however, in countries where cohabitation is widespread, the timing of marriage may have shifted to after childbearing.

      For further information please see: Relationship quality and family formation in Europe – ScienceDirect

      Photo caption: Elnur / Shutterstock.com