Individual-Level Risk and Resilience Factors Associated with Mental Health in Siblings of Individuals with Neurodevelopmental Conditions: A Network Analysis

ABSTRACT

Siblings of individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs) are exposed to unique family environments and experience a range of psychosocial risk and resilience factors. Networks of self-reported risk, resilience, and neuropsychiatric variables were estimated for siblings of individuals with (n = 235) and without (n = 480) NDCs (N = 715, mean age 22.40 years, 76% female, 74% White Caucasian). The NDC group reported more depressive (g = 0.39) and anxious (g = 0.43) symptoms than controls, and 71.5% of the NDC group reported at least one neuropsychiatric diagnosis compared to 36.9% of controls. Self-reported sleep and post-traumatic stress disorders were high amongst NDC siblings. Everyday executive functioning difficulties (cognitive inflexibility, hyperactivity/impulsivity) and emotion dysregulation were the most influential transdiagnostic risk factors for poorer functioning within the NDC group network.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The analytic code and participant data necessary to reproduce the analyses presented are available on the first author’s OSF page: https://osf.io/6w7ar/

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/87565641.2023.2190119

Notes

1. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition Text-Revision (DSM-5-TR; American Psychiatric Association, 2022) individuals with “neurodevelopmental disorders” include those with intellectual disabilities, autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), specific learning disorders, communication disorders and motor disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). Hereafter referred to as neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs), NDCs are a group of conditions with onset in the developmental period, characterized by developmental delays or difficulties that contribute to impairments of personal, social, academic, or occupational functioning (APA, 2022).

2. Although different groups and individuals have different language choice preferences, this study will generally adopt person-first language to refer to siblings with neurodevelopmental conditions; for autism-related discussions, we chose to use identity-first language (i.e., autistic sibling), which reflects a increasingly common preference amongst the majority, although not all of, the autistic community (Amaral, 2023; Keating et al., 2022). This language choice in relation to siblings of autistic individuals was the preference of our Sibling Advisory Group. The term NDC sibling refers to a sibling of an individual with an NDC; individual with an NDC or autistic sibling refers to the individual in the sibling dyad diagnosed with an NDC.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council [1184770]