Abstract Body: Background: The association of parental stress and depression with child behavioral cardiovascular health (bCVH) has received limited attention in the literature.
Methods: We used data from the Young Hearts study, a cohort examining CVH in children and adolescents. Parental stress was assessed using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-4), which consisted of 4 questions rated on a Likert scale (0-16), with a higher score indicating greater levels of stress. Parental depression was evaluated using the 2-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-2), with responses rated on a Likert scale (0-6). bCVH scores were calculated from the mean of the four behavioral metrics of the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8 (physical activity, diet, nicotine exposure, and sleep; 0-100 points each, with a higher score = better CVH) and self-reported body mass index (BMI). We examined the association of parental stress and depression with child bCVH score, using linear regression, adjusting for age, sex, race, ethnicity, household income, and parental education level.
Results: Our sample consisted of 6,427 children with complete data, with an average age of 8.2 years [SD 5.1]. Of the participants, 53.5% were male, and 46.3% were Non-Hispanic White. In adjusted models, a 1-unit higher parental depression score was associated with 1.30 (95% CL = -1.54, -1.07) point lower children’s bCVH. Parental stress also showed an association with bCVH though the effect size was smaller (-0.44 points; -0.54, -0.34). Among the individual behavioral components for parental depression, there were significant associations with physical activity (-1.75 points; -2.29, -1.21) and sleep (-1.98 points; -2.52, -1.44).
Conclusion: Parental stress and depression are inversely associated with child bCVH, highlighting the need for further investigation of potential mechanisms to inform targeted family interventions.