Study on Parenting, Emotion Regulation and Opioids (“The PERO Study”), Oregon, 2021

Physical and mental health conditions are highly prevalent among women of child-rearing age, and they are highly comorbid. The co-occurrence of physical and mental conditions constitutes a public health crisis when considered in the context of parenting, because the presence of these conditions in mothers is linked to high rates of mental health problems in children. However, most research on intergenerational transmission of health problems has focused on mental or physical health conditions in isolation, rather than examining potentially shared mechanisms that may increase children’s risk for developing a number of poor health outcomes.<br><br>Here, we focus on one mechanism that may increase intergenerational transmission of poor health outcomes: maternal emotion dysregulation (Stone &amp; Wilson, 2016). Specifically, we studied mothers who reported elevated symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD) – a disorder characterized by poor emotion regulation, including affective instability, interpersonal chaos, impulsivity, and identity disturbance.<br><br>Separate studies have shown that chronic pain (e.g., Wilson &amp; Fales, 2016) and substance use (for review, see Peisch et al., 2018) each impact parenting quality and children’s mental health outcomes. Researchers have not yet examined these factors in combination, nor have they studied how these factors relate to each other in individuals who also struggle with emotion regulation. Therefore, in our research, we examined how chronic pain and substance use impact parenting quality and children’s mental health outcomes in a sample of mothers with elevated BPD symptoms.