Daily dynamics of parental mental health: Investigating depressive symptoms and negative parental experiences

Investigating psychopathological processes and symptomatology is essential for understanding how psychological states emerge and are maintained over time. This preregistered intensive longitudinal study investigates within-person associations between key mental health symptoms, psychopathological processes, and negative experiences tied to parenthood. Daily observations from 514 parents (18,916 daily observations in total, mean daily completed observations = 36.80, mean age = 39 years) during the COVID-19 pandemic were modelled using multilevel dynamic network analysis, unveiling temporal across-day associations and contemporaneous associations among all investigated variables. Across days, helplessness predicted the cognitive-affective features of depression, in addition to rumination and emotion regulation difficulties. Being overwhelmed by the parental role and emotionally drained as a parent reciprocally reinforced each other from one day to the next, indicating that these components can manifest as a vicious loop over time. Experiencing difficulties with coping with one's own emotions was associated with negative parental components within the same time window. The findings suggest that vicious cycles between helplessness and worthlessness predict the prolonged experience of depressed states in parents. The study also highlights the distinction between cognitive-affective and somatic features of depression in parents, and how they are connected to different psychopathological processes and negative parental experiences.