Is there any relationship between children psychopathology and interactive family pattern?

Introduction The study “LTP used as a psychodiagnostic and therapeutic tool for psychiatric children and adolescents” is part of a Neuropsychiatric Unit project (NPU), aiming to find out significant relationships between children psychopathology and interactive families pattern in order to set up a functional therapeutic intervention. Method The target group evaluated by the NPIA was composed of 20 families with school-age children. During the evaluation psychodiagnostic assessment the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL, Achenbach 2000-2001) and the LTP (Fivaz-Depeursinge and Corboz-Warnery, 1999) were administered. In order to test the hypothesis we have made the following statistical analysis: a) LTP score flow (during the different phases) comparison between the clinical-borderline and non-clinical CBCL groups (generalized linear model). b) parental LTP variable scores (in each phases) comparison between clinical-borderline and non-clinical CBCL groups (t-test for independent groups). c) correlations between LTP and CBCL scores. Results Statistical differences both in LTP scores flow and in LTP variables scores in each part between clinical-borderline and non- clinical CBCL groups only in some specific psychopathological areas (attention, social and total problems, externalizing, anxious- depressed, withdrawn-depressed and somatic complaints). It is interesting that these differences are due to some of the LTP variables concerning parental abilities (co-construction, scaffolding, conflict and interferences, affective warmth, validation, activities errors). Finally better parental abilities in LTP affective warmth and validation, activities errors, parental support, scaffolding and co-construction are related to elevated scores in somatic complaints, total and social problems or viceversa (positive correlations). Conclusions These results indicated a relationship between psychopathological children symptoms and parental abilities to manage triadic interactions supporting recent developmental theories which stressed the importance to involve the global family system in diagnostic assessment in order to propose an intervention that could best fit to the patient family context.