Empathic Responses to Mother's Emotions Predict Internalizing Problems in Children of Depressed Mothers

N-(3-((3-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl)selanyl)prop-2-yn-1-yl) benzamide induces antidepressant-like effect in mice: involvement of the serotonergic system

RATIONALE

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) significantly impairs the quality of life for those affected. While the exact causes of MDD are not fully understood, the deficit of monoamines, especially serotonin and noradrenaline, is widely accepted. Resistance to long-term treatments and adverse effects are often observed, highlighting the need for new pharmacological therapies. Synthetic organic compounds containing selenium have exhibited pharmacological properties, including potential antidepressant effects.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the antidepressant-like effect of N-(3-((3-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl)selenyl)prop-2-yn-1-yl) benzamide (CF3SePB) in mice and the involvement of the serotonergic and noradrenergic systems.

METHODS

Male Swiss mice were treated with CF3SePB (1-50 mg/kg, i.g.) and 30 min later the forced swimming test (FST) or tail suspension test (TST) was performed. To investigate the involvement of the serotonergic and noradrenergic systems in the antidepressant-like effect of CF3SePB, mice were pre-treated with p-CPA (a 5-HT depletor, 100 mg/kg, i.p.) or the receptor antagonists WAY100635 (0.1 mg/kg, s.c., a 5-HT1A receptor antagonist), ketanserin (1 mg/kg, i.p., a 5-HT2A/2C receptor antagonist), ondansetron (1 mg/kg, i.p., a 5-HT3 receptor antagonist), GR110838 (0.1 mg/kg, i.p., a 5-HT4 receptor antagonist), prazosin (1 mg/kg, i.p., an α1-adrenergic receptor antagonist), yohimbine (1 mg/kg, i.p., an α2-adrenergic receptor antagonist) and propranolol (2 mg/kg, i.p., a non-selective beta-adrenergic receptor antagonist) at specific times before CF3SePB (50 mg/kg, i.g.), and after 30 min of CF3SePB administration the FST was performed.

RESULTS

CF3SePB showed an antidepressant-like effect in both FST and TST and this effect was related to the modulation of the serotonergic system, specially the 5-HT1A and 5-HT3 receptors. None of the noradrenergic antagonists prevented the antidepressant-like effect of CF3SePB. The compound exhibited a low potential for inducing acute toxicity in adult female Swiss mice.

CONCLUSION

This study pointed a new compound with antidepressant-like effect, and it could be considered for the development of new antidepressants.

Children's empathy moderates the association between perceived interparental conflict and child health

Interparental conflict is known to negatively impact child well-being, including behavioral and physiological well-being. Children's empathy - that is, vicariously experiencing others' emotions - may increase children's sensitivity to and the biological repercussions of interparental conflict. Although empathy represents a valued trait and is an important part of socioemotional development, its influence on children's physical health is unknown. This study examined whether empathy moderates the association between perceived interparental conflict and both child systemic inflammation and parent-rated overall child health in a sample of children between the ages of seven to nine. Children and their parents participating in the long-term evaluation of the Family Foundations program, a randomized trial of a perinatal preventative intervention, provided data approximately eight years following enrollment into the program. We collected peripheral blood samples via dried blood spots, anthropometric measurements, and child and parent psychosocial questionnaires. Results indicated significant positive main effects of child empathy on both C-reactive protein (CRP; B = 0.26, SE = 0.11, p =.026) and Interleukin-6 (IL-6; B = 0.20, SE = 0.10, p =.045) levels. Further, child affective empathy moderated the associations between perceived interparental conflict and both CRP (B = 0.39, SE = 0.19, p =.050) and parent-reported child health (B = 0.30, SE = 0.13, p =.021), such that greater empathy strengthened the negative associations between interparental conflict and child health. Overall, findings suggests that there may be a biological cost of being more empathic in high-conflict environments and highlight the need for tools to help more empathic children appropriately manage vicarious emotions.

Empathy and psychopathology in children and adolescents: the role of parental mental illness and emotion regulation

Objective

Although empathy is known to be a strength, recent studies suggest that empathy can be a risk factor for psychopathology under certain conditions in children. This study examines parental mental illness as such a condition. Further, it aims to investigate whether maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) mediates the relationship between empathy and psychopathological symptoms of children.

Methods

Participants were 100 children of parents with a mental illness (55% female) and 87 children of parents without a mental illness (50% female) aged 6 - 16 years and their parents.

Results

Greater cognitive empathy was related to more psychopathological symptoms in COPMI, but not in COPWMI. In addition, in COPMI maladaptive ER mediated this relationship. In contrast, greater affective empathy was associated with more psychopathological symptoms regardless of whether parents had a mental illness.

Conclusion

Our findings highlight the importance of implementing preventive programs for COPMI that specifically target the reduction of maladaptive ER.

Empathy in Preschoolers: Exploring Profiles and Age- and Gender-Related Differences

Empathy is a key skill in the daily life of preschoolers, and it is important to understand how it evolves during this crucial period of development. This paper includes two studies. The first study, which had a cross-sectional design, examined affective, cognitive, and behavioral empathy in 354 children (aged from 3 to 6 years) through a performance-based measure and questionnaires completed by their mothers. Although girls tended to have better affective empathy than boys on the performance-based task, no difference was noted in the mothers' perceptions of their children's empathy. Empathy dimensions varied depending on the age of the children. The hierarchical cluster analyses of the cases identified differentiated subgroups of children, according to their empathic skills in the three dimensions. The second study, which was longitudinal, used the same measures and investigated the developmental trajectory of empathy in 69 preschoolers over one year. The results showed that each empathic dimension predicted itself one year later, but did not predict the two others. The implications for potential interventions are emphasized in this study.

Intergenerational Transmission of Depression during Adolescence: The Mediating Roles of Hostile Attribution Bias, Empathic Concern, and Social Self-Concept

Few studies have empirically examined the role of peer microsystem in the intergenerational transmission of depression, and more importantly, little is known about the mechanisms underlying this potential pathway of intergenerational transmission. The purpose of the current study was to examine the sequential mediation effects of adolescent hostile attribution bias, empathic concern, and social self-concept on the association between maternal depression and adolescent depression. An urban Chinese sample of 761 mother-child dyads was investigated when the adolescents were in secondary school (M = 14.36 years, range =12.33-16.92 years, 52.3% female). The results provided evidence of cross-generational continuity in depression during adolescence, and the hypothesized sequential mediation model was supported. The findings highlight the importance of peer-related factors during the intergenerational transmission of depression and have important implications for interpersonal interventions that aim to prevent depression during adolescence. The limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are briefly discussed.

Association Between Children's Empathy and Depression: The Moderating Role of Social Preference

Although empathy is typically an adaptive characteristic of children, extreme empathy alone or in combination with a negative environment may contribute to a risk of depression. The present study comprehensively investigated the associations between the three constructs of empathy and depression in children, as well as the potential moderating effect of peer relationships (i.e., social preference) on this association. A total of 1223 children (mean age = 10.50 ± .93 years) completed questionnaires on empathy and depression, and social preference was nominated by their peers. Cognitive empathy and positive empathy exerted a positive quadratic effect on depression, while negative empathy had a positive linear association with depression. For children with a low social preference, all three empathy constructs were positively quadratically correlated with depression, extremely high and low empathy were associated with increased depression, and moderate empathy was associated with the lowest level of depression. For children with a high social preference, higher positive empathy was associated with lower depression.

Preschoolers' Empathy Profiles and Their Social Adjustment

Preschoolers face new challenges in their social life: the development of social and emotional abilities in order to have positive relationships with peers and adults. Empathy, the ability to share and understand the emotions of others, contributes to this socio-emotional adjustment. This exploratory study examines mothers and fathers' perceptions of their child's empathy and individual factors, such as age, gender, and personality, which are related to cognitive and affective empathy in 63 typically developing preschoolers. Links between children's individual characteristics (empathy and personality) and their social adjustment on the one hand and risk of developing internalized vs. externalized behaviors on the other were also investigated. Parents completed four questionnaires about their child's empathy, personality, and social (mal)adjustment. The results showed that mothers and fathers perceived their children's cognitive and affective empathy, attention to others' feelings, and social actions (such as helping), in the same way, except for emotion contagion. Gender differences appeared specifically for some components of empathy: girls were said to pay more attention to others' emotions while boys had better cognitive empathy. Moreover, children's empathy as perceived by mothers or fathers was positively linked with their age, and with personality factors (extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, and openness to experience). Cognitive empathy and personality were found to be partly related to higher social skills and lower externalized and internalized behaviors. The results nuanced specific links between cognitive and affective empathy and social adjustment as well as behavior problems at preschool age. These results may have some implications for future research and prevention in childhood.

The Developmental Trajectory of Empathy and Its Association with Early Symptoms of Psychopathology in Children with and without Hearing Loss

Empathy enables people to share, understand, and show concern for others’ emotions. However, this capacity may be more difficult to acquire for children with hearing loss, due to limited social access, and the effect of hearing on empathic maturation has been unexplored. This four-wave longitudinal study investigated the development of empathy in children with and without hearing loss, and how this development is associated with early symptoms of psychopathology. Seventy-one children with hearing loss and cochlear implants (CI), and 272 typically-hearing (TH) children, participated (aged 1–5 years at Time 1). Parents rated their children’s empathic skills (affective empathy, attention to others’ emotions, prosocial actions, and emotion acknowledgment) and psychopathological symptoms (internalizing and externalizing behaviors). Children with CI and TH children were rated similarly on most of the empathic skills. Yet, fewer prosocial actions were reported in children with CI than in TH children. In both groups, affective empathy decreased with age, while prosocial actions and emotion acknowledgment increased with age and stabilized when children entered primary schools. Attention to emotions increased with age in children with CI, yet remained stable in TH children. Moreover, higher levels of affective empathy, lower levels of emotion acknowledgment, and a larger increase in attention to emotions over time were associated with more psychopathological symptoms in both groups. These findings highlight the importance of social access from which children with CI can learn to process others’ emotions more adaptively. Notably, interventions for psychopathology that tackle empathic responses may be beneficial for both groups, alike.

The Perspective Matters: A Multi-informant Study on the Relationship Between Social-Emotional Competence and Preschoolers' Externalizing and Internalizing Symptoms

Recent research demands a multi-informant and multi-factorial assessment of preschool-age psychopathology. Based on a tripartite model, we tested the relationship between emotional and social competence and their contribution to externalizing and internalizing symptoms in a preschool-age community sample (N = 117, M = 4.67 years, SD = 2.75 months). We assessed teachers' (N = 109) and parents' (N = 77) perspective using the Strengths-and-Difficulties-Questionnaire and children's perspective using the Berkeley-Puppet-Interview and a standardized emotional-competence-test (MeKKi). We found externalizing symptoms being negatively related to prosocial behavior in teachers' and parents' reports and positively related to social initiative in teachers' reports. In teachers' reports only, a mediation effect of emotional competence via social competence on externalizing symptoms was shown. Children, but not caregivers, reported internalizing symptoms being positively related to prosocial behavior. These results highlight the importance of multiple informants and especially of children's self-perception in preschool-age psychopathology.

Parental depressive symptoms as a risk factor for child depressive symptoms; testing the social mediators in internationally adopted children

Parental depressive symptoms have shown to be associated with offspring depression but much of the research has been focused on maternal depression. The aim of our study was to investigate the extent to which depressive symptoms of both parents associate with offspring depressive symptoms and whether social factors mediate these associations using data from adopted children with no shared genetic background. Data were derived from the Finnish Adoption survey study (a subsample of adopted children aged between 9 and 12 years, n = 548). Parental depressive symptoms were measured using short version of the General Health Questionnaire and Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) was used to measure depressive symptoms in adoptees. Paternal depressive symptoms were related to the total CDI (B = 0.33, p = 0.05) and two dimensions of offspring depressive symptoms: negative mood (B = 0.10, p = 0.03) and interpersonal problems (B = 0.06, p = 0.009). These associations remained significant even when adjusted for child's age and gender, age at adoption, type of placement before adoption, continent of birth and adoptive family's SES. No associations were found between maternal and any dimensions of offspring depressive symptoms. No information about the mental health of biological parents was available. We interpret the results as demonstrating that intergenerational transmission of depressive symptoms is not solely related to shared genes. Also, the results highlight the association of paternal depression with offspring depressive symptoms.

Nuancing the role of social skills- a longitudinal study of early maternal psychological distress and adolescent depressive symptoms

BACKGROUND

Social skills might play an important role for the relationship between maternal psychological distress and subsequent development of depressive symptoms. The majority perspective is that social skills is adaptive and protective, but there is a need to also highlight the potential maladaptive effect of social skills in some settings or for some sub groups. The current study examined the longitudinal interplay between maternal-reported psychological distress in early childhood (age 1.5), and offspring reports on social skills and depressive symptoms in early (age 12.5) and middle adolescence (age 14.5).

METHODS

We used data from the Tracking Opportunities and Problems Study (TOPP), a community-based longitudinal study following Norwegian families to examine direct links and interactions between early maternal distress (measured with the Hopkins Symptom Checklist) and early adolescent offspring social skills (measured with the Social Skills Rating System) and middle adolescent depressive symptoms (measured with the Moods and Feelings Questionnaire) in 370 families (in total 740 mothers and adolescents).

RESULTS

Exposure to childhood maternal distress predicted offspring depressive symptoms in middle adolescence. Higher social skills in early adolescence predicted lower levels of depressive symptoms for girls, but not for boys, in middle adolescence. An interaction effect was found in which adolescents exposed to early maternal distress who reported high social skills in early adolescence had the highest level of depressive symptoms in middle adolescence.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings highlight the nuances in the role of social skills for adolescent depressive symptoms - having the potential to be both adaptive as well as maladaptive for some subgroups (those experiencing maternal psychological distress). This has important implications for social skill programs.