FAMILY ENVIRONMENT AND ADOLESCENT DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS AND ANTISOCIAL-BEHAVIOR - A MULTIVARIATE GENETIC-ANALYSIS

Measures of family environment often show substantial differences betw een children in the same family and are thus nonshared environment can didates. A key question is whether differential environments are relat ed to differential outcomes when genetic differences between children in the same family are controlled. Parent and child reports and observ ations of family interactions were used to assess familial negativity and adolescents' depressive symptoms and antisocial behavior in a gene tically informative sample of 719 same-sex sibling pairs ranging from 10 to 18 years old. Analyses revealed that parental and sibling negati vity is significantly related to adolescent adjustment through nonshar ed environmental processes, although genetic factors account for most of the association between parental negativity and adolescent adjustme nt.