Effects of Maternal Depression and Mother-Child Relationship Quality in Early Childhood on Neural Reactivity to Rejection and Peer Stress in Adolescence: A 9-Year Longitudinal Study

Mental Health and Treatment Engagement among Low-Income Women of Color Living with HIV

Low-income women of color are disproportionately more likely to contract HIV, struggle with treatment adherence, and have compromised health as a result of HIV infections in comparison to White and more affluent women. The current study is a secondary analysis aimed at examining the association between stress, symptoms of depression, trauma exposure, healthcare engagement, and adherence self-efficacy, among low-income women of color with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Structural equation modeling is used to identify latent mental health symptoms that may influence one another, as well as outcomes involving treatment engagement. Participants contributing to this dataset (n = 134) were low income, women of color (primarily African American) living with HIV or AIDS, receiving care at a major medical center in the northeastern United States. Findings indicate significant indirect associations between perceived stress and the outcome of medical appointment attendance. Significant mediators of this indirect relationship include depressive symptoms, parenting stress, and adherence self-efficacy. Implications for health and behavioral health practice and policy interventions are drawn. Areas in need of future research are identified.

Trauma in the lives of parents experiencing severe perinatal mental illness

Background

The perinatal period is a time of 'high risk' for new and recurrent episodes of mental illness with 0.1-0.2% of birthing parents requiring admission to specialist mental health units in the months after birth. The prevalence and role of trauma in the lives of birthing parents (most commonly mothers) experiencing severe perinatal mental illness is not well known.

Method

In a new perinatal mental health unit in Sydney Australia, a retrospective audit of trauma prevalence was undertaken using patient completed questionnaires and electronic medical record data. Descriptive analysis was undertaken.

Results

Prevalence of trauma in the lives of mothers with severe mental illness was found to be higher than that reported in general or community mental health settings, with 76% of mothers reporting lifetime trauma exposure and 24% meeting criteria for complex PTSD. The majority reported trauma experiences likely to impact attachment and also reported difficulties in responding to their infants' cues and needs.

Discussion

The findings suggest a need for more research, awareness, and consideration of the role of trauma in experiences of perinatal mental illness, with implications for developing trauma informed models for responding to parental mental illness.

The Quality of Mother-Child Feeding Interactions Predicts Psychopathological Symptoms in Offspring and Mothers Seven Years Later: A Longitudinal Study on the General Population

The increased risk of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in children has been observed in the presence of maternal psychopathology. This study aimed to investigate a potential pathway involving the quality of early interactions between mothers and their children. A sample of 150 mother-child dyads underwent assessment when the children were 3 years old and around the age of 10. Video recordings of feeding exchanges between mothers and children were analyzed to evaluate the quality of mother-child interactions. Maternal psychopathology and child internalizing and externalizing symptoms were measured through self-report and report-form measures completed by mothers. The quality of mother-child feeding interactions at three years of age significantly differentiated (p < 0.001), eight years later, between mothers at high and low psychopathological risk and between children exhibiting clinical and subclinical internalizing symptoms. Clinically relevant child symptoms were notably more prevalent when the mother-child interaction quality at three years of age was maladaptive, particularly in the context of concurrent high maternal psychopathological risk. The study findings underscore the importance of focusing on the early quality of mother-child feeding interactions to identify potential situations of maternal and child clinical risk for the development of psychopathological symptoms and to guide preemptive measures and policies.

Annual Research Review: Emotion processing in offspring of mothers with depression diagnoses - a systematic review of neural and physiological research

BACKGROUND

Theories of the intergenerational transmission of depression emphasize alterations in emotion processing among offspring of depressed mothers as a key risk mechanism, raising questions about biological processes contributing to these alterations. The objective of this systematic annual research review was to examine and integrate studies of the associations between maternal depression diagnoses and offspring's emotion processing from birth through adolescence across biological measures including autonomic psychophysiology, electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), event-related potentials (ERP), and structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

METHODS

The review was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA 2020 standards. A systematic search was conducted in PsycInfo and PubMed in 2022 for studies that included, 1) mothers with and without DSM-defined depressive disorders assessed via a clinical or diagnostic interview, and 2) measures of offspring emotion processing assessed at the psychophysiological or neural level between birth and 18 years of age.

RESULTS

Findings from 64 studies indicated that young offspring of mothers with depression histories exhibit heightened corticolimbic activation to negative emotional stimuli, reduced left frontal brain activation, and reduced ERP and mesocorticolimbic responses to reward cues compared to offspring of never-depressed mothers. Further, activation of resting-state networks involved in affective processing differentiate offspring of depressed relative to nondepressed mothers. Some of these alterations were only apparent among youth of depressed mothers exposed to negative environmental contexts or exhibiting current emotional problems. Further, some of these patterns were observable in infancy, reflecting very early emerging vulnerabilities.

CONCLUSIONS

This systematic review provides evidence that maternal depression is associated with alterations in emotion processing across several biological units of analysis in offspring. We present a preliminary conceptual model of the role of deficient emotion processing in pathways from maternal depression to offspring psychopathology and discuss future research avenues addressing limitations of the existing research and clinical implications.

The time course of reactivity to social acceptance and rejection feedback: An examination of event-related potentials and behavioral measures in a peer interaction task

Measurement of social processes is of interest across areas of research. Event-related potentials (ERPs) measured using electroencephalography (EEG) offer high temporal resolution, but little work has leveraged this strength to characterize the time course of social feedback processing. The present study aimed to replicate and extend previous research by systematically identifying the temporal dynamics of responses to both social acceptance and rejection feedback relative to neutral feedback, examining internal consistency of ERPs, and exploring correspondence with behavioral measures elicited during a peer interaction task. Emerging adults (N = 118) completed a computerized peer interaction task in which they made decisions to accept or reject peers and received rejection, acceptance, and neutral feedback while EEG data were recorded. Principal component analysis was used to derive temporally and spatially distinct ERP components sensitive to positive and negative social feedback. Participant voting patterns and post-task liking ratings for computer-controlled peers were also examined. Replicating prior work, components consistent with N1, P2, reward positivity (RewP), and P3 emerged, but distinct patterns of modulation by acceptance and rejection relative to neutral feedback were observed. Most components showed acceptable internal consistency. Sensitivity to peer feedback assessed through participant voting patterns and liking ratings for peers was correlated with RewP and P3 components. Results highlight the complexity of social feedback processing observable in a computerized peer interaction task and offer promising neural and behavioral measures that can be used to examine individual differences in sensitivity to both social acceptance and rejection feedback.

Parenting, Peers and Psychosocial Adjustment: Are the Same-or Different-Children Affected by Each?

The prospective research presented herein extends work on parent and peer effects on adolescent psychosocial adjustment by looking beyond average effects. Instead, it considers variation in susceptibility to each source of influence in order to assess the extent to which those individuals most and least susceptible to parent effects are similarly-or differentially-susceptible to peer effects. Data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (n = 1364, 48.3% female, age range: 10-15 yrs., race/ethnicity: 80.4% white, 12.9% black and 6.7% other) was analyzed to assess the degree to which each child was susceptible to parent and peer effects. Toward this end, an influence statistic, DFBETAS, was used. A significant and moderate positive association between the two susceptibility effects indicated that children most or least susceptible to the effects of quality of parenting proved to be similarly affected by their peers, although this was not the case for a substantial minority of youth. The fact that at least some children vary dramatically in the effects to which they are most susceptible is discussed with respect to potential targets of intervention, namely, parents or peers.

Observed Maternal Coping Socialization and Child Internalizing Symptoms: The Roles of Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Peer Stress

Empirical evidence relying primarily on questionnaire reports indicates parent coping socialization messages play an important role in children's psychological functioning. The present study utilized a multi-informant, multi-method design to build on previous coping socialization research in childhood and adolescence. A novel coding system was developed to measure observed parental socialization of coping messages from observations of a discussion-based peer stress task. Questionnaires and direct observations were obtained from mothers with and without a history of depression (N = 116; 50% with a history of depression) and their children (9 to 15 years). Observed maternal coping socialization messages were not significantly correlated with mother or child reports of child internalizing symptoms in bivariate analyses. However, in multiple linear regression analyses, current maternal depressive symptoms and children's level of peer stress emerged as significant moderators of the association between observed maternal coping socialization messages and children's internalizing symptoms. The conceptual and methodological contributions of the current study are discussed, limitations and strengths are noted, and implications for future research are outlined.

Altered reward responsiveness and depressive symptoms: An examination of social and monetary reward domains and interactions with rejection sensitivity

BACKGROUND

Alterations in positive valence systems and social processes, including low reward responsiveness and high rejection sensitivity, have been observed in depression. Most reward research focuses on the monetary domain, but social reward responsiveness may be particularly relevant to understanding the etiology of depression, especially in combination with other social processes. Pathways to depression are complex, and research testing interactions between multiple factors is needed. The present study examined the interactive effects of reward responsiveness and rejection sensitivity on depressive symptoms using both social and monetary reward electroencephalogram (EEG) tasks.

METHODS

Emerging adults (N = 120) completed peer interaction and monetary incentive delay tasks while EEG data were recorded, as well as self-report measures of rejection sensitivity and depressive symptoms.

RESULTS

The interaction between social reward responsiveness and self-reported rejection sensitivity was significantly associated with depressive symptoms, such that rejection sensitivity was associated with greater depressive symptoms for those with a relatively reduced response to social reward. The interaction between monetary reward responsiveness and rejection sensitivity was not significant.

LIMITATIONS

The study was cross-sectional and used a non-clinical sample.

CONCLUSIONS

Results suggest a possible pathway for depressive symptoms characterized by the combination of high rejection sensitivity and low social reward responsiveness. Findings highlight the need for consideration of multiple domains of reward responsiveness in clinical neuroscience research. With extension to longitudinal studies and clinical samples, the present findings may inform understanding of targets for intervention.