Key words: Family Functioning/Criticism/Depression/Family Systems Model/Health Behaviour/Interpersonal Relationships/Behaviour/Social Support/Mental Health/Family Behaviour/USA/Relationships"
Summary: It was hypothesised that social relationships would exert effects on health behaviour and that these effects would be more powerfully explicated by family functioning than by social support. Family criticism was found to be directly associated with depressive symptoms and cardiovascular behaviours. The results support the primacy of family functioning factors in the associations among social relationships, mental health and health behaviours. The contrasting relationships between emotional involvement and depressive symptoms on the one hand and emotional involvement and health behaviours on the other suggest the need for a more complex model to understand the connections between social relationships and health.