You can’t say your sister drives you crazy (well, maybe a little) because researchers from Brigham Young University recently found that loving sibling relationships, particularly sisters, have lasting positive effects on children’s behavior and mental health.
Laura Padilla-Walker, assistant professor in BYU’s School of Family Life, told USA Today that this closeness encourages traits like kindness and generosity and helps protect against wrongdoing and depression.
“Siblings are people that a child lives with every day and yet we haven’t really seriously considered their influence,” James Harper, another professor in the School of Family Life, told USA Today.
Dr. Daniel Carlat, AOL Health’s mental health expert, said that psychiatry has realized for a long time that siblings have lasting and significant effects on mental health, often more so than parents or outside friendships.
“It has always been clear that our close friends shape our identities as we grow up,” he told AOL Health. “Siblings are, in a sense, our very closest friends if only because we are around them all the time.”
