Better Family Relationships – Higher Well-Being: The Connection Between Relationship Quality and Health Related Resources

Publication date: Available online 4 May 2019Source: Mental Health & PreventionAuthor(s): Dennis Grevenstein, Matthias Bluemke, Jochen Schweitzer, Corina Aguilar-RaabAbstractFamily relationships form very important social relationships. They provide the social context enabling the development for a healthy personality and fostering social competencies and the capacity for social adjustment. Several constructs constitute a complex sample of health beneficial attributes, such as resilience, sense of coherence, self-compassion and others, that haven't been investigated in connection with perceived quality of family relationships and collective family efficacy. In three studies we investigated, if perceived quality of family relationships – assessed with a relatively new measure: the Evaluation of Social Systems Scale – was associated with these advantageous health-related qualities, additionally confirming EVOS’ construct validity. In study 1 (N = 207) and 2 (N = 305) university students filled out several paper-pencil-questionnaire whereas in study 3 (N = 528) a heterogeneous sample took part in an online-survey. Controlling for participants’ age and sex, better family relationships were associated with reduced psychological distress (r = −.30 to −.37), more satisfaction with life (r = .40), stronger resilience (r = .37), sense of coherence (r = .37), self-compassion (r = .33), optimism (r = .32), general self-efficacy (r = .2...
Source: Mental Health and Prevention - Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research