The Impact of the Family Environment on Adolescent Mental Health: The Role of Parenting Styles, Attachment, and Emotion Regulation
Keywords:
Family environment, adolescent mental health, parenting styles, attachment, emotion regulation, qualitative researchAbstract
This study aimed to explain adolescents’ lived experiences of how the family environment, parenting styles, attachment relationships, and emotion-regulation processes influence their mental health. This qualitative study was conducted using thematic analysis. The participants were 20 adolescents aged 14–18 years living in Tehran, Iran, who were selected through purposive maximum-variation sampling based on age, gender, school grade, family structure, and socioeconomic background. Data were collected exclusively through individual semi-structured interviews. Each interview lasted approximately 45–75 minutes, was audio-recorded with permission, and was transcribed verbatim. Conceptual saturation was reached during the eighteenth interview, followed by two additional interviews to confirm that no substantively new meanings were emerging. Data were organized and analyzed using NVivo software. The analytic process involved familiarization with the transcripts, initial coding, development of candidate themes, theme review, definition and naming of themes, and preparation of the final report. Participant feedback, peer review, reflexive memo writing, an audit trail, and constant comparison were used to enhance credibility, dependability, and analytic transparency. Four major categories were identified: “family emotional climate and patterns of parental authority,” “attachment security and parental emotional availability,” “emotion socialization and family co-regulation,” and “conflict, communication, and boundaries of adolescent autonomy.” Adolescents who experienced parental warmth, consistent boundaries, unconditional acceptance, respectful communication, and opportunities to express emotions reported greater psychological security, self-confidence, and emotion-regulation capacity. Conversely, psychological control, persistent criticism, conditional affection, emotional unavailability, unresolved interparental conflict, invalidation of emotions, and invasion of privacy were associated with anxiety, depressed mood, anger, withdrawal, concealment, and maladaptive emotion-regulation strategies. The findings indicate that adolescent mental health is shaped not by a single parenting behavior but by the interaction of parenting style, attachment security, emotional communication, and family-level co-regulation. Family-centered interventions should therefore complement adolescent-focused services by strengthening parental emotional responsiveness, reducing psychological control and punitive emotional reactions, improving constructive communication, and supporting age-appropriate autonomy.
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