Children's self-blame appraisals about their mothers' depressive symptoms and risk for internalizing symptoms

Using Analogies to Help Adolescents Unlearn Self-Blame

One of the changes included in DSM-5 to the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was the inclusion of negative cognitions and emotions related to the trauma, including distorted self-blame for the trauma.¹ Studies show that many young people experience self-blame after experiencing various types of trauma,^2-4 that self-blame from trauma is a key mediating factor in internalizing symptoms in adolescents,² and that self-blame is tied to higher levels of trauma symptoms.³ However, studies have also suggested that young people develop self-blame when they do not directly experience PTSD from trauma, such as maternal depression, parental divorce or separation, bullying, and general negative events.⁵ There appear to be multiple pathways in which young people learn self-blame, and self-blame should be assessed on an individualized level. It has been suggested that psychotherapy with children and adolescents should involve translating the goals of treatment into simple concrete concepts, such as "a simple situation that is familiar to them from day-to-day life."⁶ In addition to evidence-based psychotherapeutic interventions that target symptoms of self-blame resulting from trauma, analogies may serve as potential intervention tools to translate the goal of unlearning self-blame relevant to the individual, situational, and cultural contexts.

The Transition to Adulthood in Children of Depressed Parents: Long-Term Follow-Up Data from the Family Talk Preventive Intervention Project

Little is known about the effects of parental depression on offspring as they transition to adulthood-a challenging time developmentally, when late adolescents must separate from home, achieve intimate relationships, and develop a sense of identity. We present long-term quantitative and qualitative data from early adolescents with a depressed parent who were randomized to one of two family-based preventive interventions and followed over time, across the transition to young adulthood. Specifically, we present clinical measures of psychopathology and Likert-scale questionnaire data from young adults and their parents regarding the transition to adulthood and perceptions of the interventions. We also report in-depth qualitative interview data from young adults about the effects of parental depression on their transition to adulthood. Findings suggest that leaving home, establishing relationships, and coping with stressors may be challenging for emerging adults. Furthermore, the interviews highlight the importance of siblings, the burden of parental depression, and the development of self-understanding and empathy in young adults who grew up with a depressed parent. Data suggest that clinicians, policy makers, educators, and employers must address the preventive and clinical needs of young people and their families as they transition to young adulthood after growing up with depressed parents.

Psychological Consequences of Experienced Stress in Childhood — Phenomena of "Abandonment" and "Involvement"

The article deals with the fundamental problem of psychology, devoted to the theoretical analysis of the specifics of the child's experience of stressful situations with different levels of traumatization. Along with the lack of childhood stress understanding and research, the very principles of differentiation between every day and traumatic stress remain the least studied. In the theory of post-traumatic stress, it has been proven that one of the criteria for the danger/safety of a life situation is a person's subjective evaluation of the life threat degree. Such an assessment is based on the individual's representations of psychological safety and its components, such as "internal comfort", "experience/awareness" and "positive environment". In the course of a theoretical analysis of the problem of child's stress, we have shown in the article that a child's feeling of internal comfort and stability depends on the degree of the environment activity, its ability not only to protect the child, but also to provide additional opportunities. In accordance with the purpose of the work, the primary emphasis is not on the resourcefulness of the child's social environment, but on its limitation — the phenomena of "abandonment" and "involvement", which are analyzed taking into account a specific context — the impact on the child of everyday stressors and stressors of high intensity. The methodological basis of the study was the system (B.F. Lomov) and subject-activity approaches (S.L. Rubinshtein, A.V. Brushlinsky and others), the dynamic approach to the study of personality (L.I. Antsyferova). Focusing on these approaches has allowed us to consider the child stress in accordance with a whole system of factors (the nature of the stressor, supporting/non-supporting social environment, etc.). The methods of abstraction, formalization and interpretation are used as theoretical procedures. On the basis of an expert assessment, the features of reactions to everyday stress (situations of interaction of a child with parents and peers) are highlighted, which, unlike traumatic stress (situations of an extreme nature), are not determined by the impact of a specific stressor, but arise as a response to a latent cause of a diffuse nature associated with violation of social and information safety of the child. Manifestations of everyday stress act as a child's reaction to the feeling of "abandonment", which turns out to be associated with emotional, social and informational deprivation, with the leveling or distortion by adults of the child's social roles (the role structure of interaction). The feeling of being "involved" in the context of a traumatic event is accompanied by physical deprivation and a more intense experience of emotional deprivation (emotional rejection), including the child in non-normative social relations and imposing obligations on him that do not correspond to the level of the child's physical, social and mental maturity. The phenomena of abandonment and involvement are analyzed using examples of various situations of everyday and psycho-traumatic nature.