Adolescent recognition of parental affect: influence of depressive symptoms

Maternal aggressive behavior in interactions with adolescent offspring: Proximal social-cognitive predictors in depressed and nondepressed mothers

Maternal depressive symptoms are associated with elevations in harsh parenting behavior, including criticism, negative affect, and hostile or coercive behavior, and these behaviors contribute to associations between maternal depressive symptomatology and child functioning. We used multilevel survival analysis to examine social-cognitive processes as proximal predictors of the onset and offset of maternal aggressive behavior during interactions with their adolescent children. Low-income women (N = 180) were selected for either: (a) elevated depressive symptoms and a history of treatment for depression (depressed group) or (b) not more than mild levels of current depressive symptomatology, no history of depression treatment, and no current mental health treatment (nondepressed group). These women and their adolescent children (ages 11-14, M = 12.93; 96 male sex, as assigned at birth) participated in a dyadic problem-solving interaction and mothers completed a video-mediated recall procedure, in which they watched a segment of the interaction, labeled their adolescents' affect, and made attributions for their behavior. Mothers in the depressed group were more likely to initiate aggressive behavior and, once initiated, were less likely to transition out of it. Mothers in both groups were less likely to transition out of aggressive behavior when they made negative attributions for their adolescents' behavior. Findings point to promising cognitive and behavioral targets for intervention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Family Members' Perceptions of Caregiver-Centered Communication with Hospice Interdisciplinary Teams: Relationship to Caregiver Wellbeing

OBJECTIVE

Investigators sought to determine how family caregivers' psychological and physical wellbeing influenced their perceptions of communication with hospice providers.

METHODS

Researchers conducted a secondary analysis of quantitative data generated during two multisite randomized clinical trials of supportive interventions for hospice family caregivers. Caregivers' (N = 525) self-reported anxious symptoms, depressive symptoms, physical quality of life, and perceptions of communication with hospice providers were analyzed via a series of linear models that included demographic and contextual controls.

RESULTS

Caregivers' anxious symptoms, depressive symptoms, and physical quality of life were largely unrelated to caregivers' perceptions of their communication with hospice providers when adjusted for demographic and contextual factors.

CONCLUSIONS

Variation in caregivers' perceptions of their communication with hospice providers was not well explained by caregiver wellbeing. Additional research is needed to understand if and how caregivers' perceptions of communication with hospice providers are related to factors not included in this secondary analysis. Provider-related variables may be particularly important to consider.

Parent-Adolescent Dyads as Temporal Interpersonal Emotion Systems

Research on the role of parent-adolescent relationships in psychosocial adjustment needs a conceptual approach that specifies the processes by which development is nested in the relationship. I forward a new approach and emphasize the need to consider the unique elements that individuals bring to the dyadic system. I also emphasize the need to examine processes at multiple time scales. I highlight the complexity of dyadic system dynamics: Biological predispositions set the foundation for the parent-adolescent relationship and the emotion dynamics that emerge during interactions. As the system gets entrained through repeated interactions over longer time scales, real-time dynamics coalesce into psychosocial adjustment, which in turn constrains real-time dynamics. I review the evidence for each of these processes and discuss the implications.

Prospective Bidirectional Associations between Attachment and Depressive Symptoms from Middle Childhood to Adolescence

Insecure attachment to parents consistently correlates with adolescent depression. However, the order of cause and effect, the impact of confounding, and gender disparities in this relationship remain unresolved. The present study therefore examined the prospective associations between attachment relationships to mothers and fathers and depressive symptoms in a community sample of Spanish children (n = 904; 49.4% females) assessed biennially from age 10-16 years, net of all unmeasured time-invariant confounding. Insecure relationships predicted depressive symptoms, and more so among girls, but depressive symptoms also forecasted worsened attachment relationships. At ages 12-14, mother-child attachment proved to be more important for the development of depressive symptoms than father-child attachment. These findings reveal a pattern of reciprocal influence between attachment relationships and depressive symptoms that appears to vary as a function of the parental and child's gender and developmental period. Thus, efforts aimed at strengthening the parent-child attachment relationship-across the transition from middle childhood to adolescence-may prevent or reduce depressive symptoms, especially by targeting mothers and female adolescents.

Depressive Symptoms in Mothers and Daughters: Attachment Style Moderates Reporter Agreement

Parents and adolescents show only modest agreement when reporting on depressive symptoms. Drawing from attachment theory and previous research on informant discrepancies, we tested hypotheses about how adolescent attachment style may impact reporting agreement in a sample of 184 low-income mother-adolescent daughter dyads (adolescent mean age = 15.4 (SD = 1.05), maternal mean age = 41.4 (SD = 7.60); 58 % Latina, 26 % African-American/Black, 16 % as non-Hispanic, White). Mothers and adolescents reported on their own and each others' depressive symptoms and adolescents reported on attachment style. Using a moderated Actor Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) to calculate reporter bias and accuracy estimates, we tested whether attachment style moderated maternal and adolescent accuracy in theoretically consistent ways. Mothers and adolescents showed similar levels of accuracy and bias when reporting on each other. Consistent with hypotheses, we found that adolescents who reported high levels of preoccupation were less accurate when reporting on their mothers because they tended to observe symptoms that their mothers did not endorse. Conversely, mothers were the most accurate in these dyads, potentially because preoccupied adolescents tend to elevate displays of emotional distress. Reporting accuracy was not affected by a dismissive style. These results add to literature indicating that parent-child reporting discrepancies often reflect meaningful information about relationships, and highlight the need to consider different sources of reporting bias and accuracy in assessment and treatment.

Links Between the Mother-Adolescent and Father-Adolescent Relationships and Adolescent Depression: A Genetically Informed Study

This study examined the unique roles of support and conflict in the relationship with the mother and the father in predicting changes in adolescents' depressive symptoms over a 1-year period. Potential moderating effects of genetic factors (Gene × Environment interaction) and sex were also investigated. This study utilized a design of twins raised in the same family, based on a sample of 121 monozygotic and 88 dizygotic same-sex twin pairs (418 individuals; 52.2% girls) assessed in Grade 8 (M = 14.09, SD = .29) and in Grade 9 (M = 15.07, SD = .26). Depressive symptoms and the parent-adolescent relationship quality were measured with self-report questionnaires. Multilevel regressions revealed that a lack of support in the father-adolescent relationship predicted increased depressive symptoms among all adolescents, whereas conflict in the father-adolescent relationship predicted increased depressive symptoms more strongly as adolescents' genetic vulnerability for depressive symptoms increased. Moreover, a high level of support in the relationship with the mother predicted increased depressive symptoms in boys-but not girls-with a high genetic risk for such problems. In line with a diathesis-stress model of psychopathology, these findings suggest that relationship quality with both parents might impact girls' and boys' depressive symptoms but that these associations depend to some extent on adolescents' genetic vulnerabilities.

Informative Disagreements: Associations Between Relationship Distress, Depression, and Discrepancy in Interpersonal Perception Within Couples

This study evaluated the associations between relationship distress, depression symptoms, and discrepancy in interpersonal perception within couples. After completing a series of discussion tasks, couples (N = 88) rated their behavior using the circumplex-based Structural Analysis of Social Behavior Model (SASB; Benjamin, 1979, 1987, 2000). Overall, couple members were strikingly similar in their interpersonal perceptions, and tended to see themselves as friendly, reciprocal in their focus, and balanced between connection and separateness. As hypothesized, however, perceptual discrepancy was related to relationship distress and depression. Relationship distress was associated with discrepancy regarding transitive behavior focused on the partner, while depression was associated with disagreement about intransitive, self-focused behavior. Analysis of affiliation and autonomy revealed that relationship distress was associated with seeing oneself as reacting with more hostility than the partner sees, and perceiving one's partner as more hostile, more controlling, and less submissive than he or she does. Partners of depressed individuals viewed themselves as more controlling than their mate did. Men's depression was associated with disagreement between partners regarding men's self-focused behavior. Results underscore the importance of considering interpersonal perception when conceptualizing relationship distress and depression within intimate relationships.

Circles of engagement: Childhood pain and parent brain

Social interaction can have a profound effect on individual behavior, perhaps most salient in interactions between sick suffering children and their parents. Chronic pain is a difficult condition that can produce considerable changes in children's behaviors that can secondarily have profound effects on their parents. It may create a functionally disabling negative feedback loop. Research supports the notion of alterations in the brain of individuals who observe and empathize with loved ones in acute pain. However, neural activity in relation to empathic responses in the context of chronic pain has not been examined. Ongoing suffering with chronic pain in a child can result in child's brain circuit alterations. Moreover, prolonged suffering jointly experienced by the parent may putatively produce maladaptive changes in their neural networks and consequently in parental behaviors. Here we put forth the conceptual framework for 'Chronic pain contagion' (CPC). We review the underlying processes in CPC and discuss implications for devising and implementing treatments for children in chronic pain and their parents.

Affective patterns in triadic family interactions: Associations with adolescent depression

Affective family processes are associated with the development of depression during adolescence. However, empirical description of these processes is generally based on examining affect at the individual or dyadic level. The purpose of this study was to examine triadic patterns of affect during parent-adolescent interactions in families with or without a depressed adolescent. We used state space grid analysis to characterize the state of all three actors simultaneously. Compared to healthy controls, triads with depressed adolescents displayed a wider range of affect, demonstrated less predictability of triadic affective sequences, spent more time in and returned more quickly to discrepant affective states, and spent less time in and returned more slowly to matched affective states, particularly while engaged in a problem-solving interaction. Furthermore, we identified seven unique triadic states in which triads with depressed adolescents spent significantly more time than triads with healthy controls. The present study enhances understanding of family affective processes related to depression by taking a more systemic approach and revealing triadic patterns that go beyond individual and dyadic analyses.

Theory of mind performance in women with posttraumatic stress disorder related to childhood abuse

OBJECTIVE

Key questions remain unaddressed concerning the nature of interpersonal functioning in trauma survivors, including the ability to understand and interpret other people's thoughts and feelings. Here, we investigate theory of mind (ToM) performance of women with PTSD related to childhood abuse in comparison to healthy controls.

METHOD

Participants completed two ToM tasks, the Interpersonal Perception Task-15 (IPT-15) and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task - Revised (RMET).

RESULTS

Relative to controls, women with a history of childhood trauma had difficulty recognizing familial relationships depicted in the IPT-15 (P = 0.005). No other category of the IPT-15 showed significant group differences. In addition, while healthy women displayed faster RMET reaction times to emotionally valenced mental states (positive: P = 0.003; negative: P = 0.016) compared with neutral mental states, the PTSD group showed similar reaction times across all valences. The presence of dissociative symptoms (e.g., disengagement, amnesia, identity dissociation) was strongly associated with hindered accuracy of complex mental state identification and altered perception of kinship interactions.

CONCLUSION

Women with PTSD stemming from childhood trauma show changes in ToM abilities particularly those often involved in the interpretation of family interactions. In addition, individuals with PTSD showed slower reaction times during the recognition of complex mental states from emotionally salient facial/eye expressions in comparison with healthy subjects.

Parental emotion socialization in clinically depressed adolescents: enhancing and dampening positive affect

This study compared parental socialization of adolescent positive affect in families of depressed and healthy adolescents. Participants were 107 adolescents (42 boys) aged 14 - 18 years and their parents. Half of the participants met criteria for major depressive disorder and the others were demographically matched adolescents without emotional or behavioral disorders. Results based on multi-source questionnaire and interview data indicated that mothers and fathers of depressed adolescents were less accepting of adolescents' positive affect and more likely to use strategies that dampen adolescents' positive affect than were parents of healthy adolescents. Additionally, fathers of depressed adolescents exhibited fewer responses likely to enhance the adolescents' positive affect than were fathers of healthy adolescents. These findings build on those of previous work in examining parental responses to adolescent emotions, focusing on positive emotions and including both mothers and fathers.

Views of young people with depression about family and significant other support: interpretative phenomenological analysis study

Families and significant others have an important role in helping young people cope with depression, but lack of support undermines coping. In this paper, we present the views of young people with depression about the role of family and significant others in assisting them to cope with their illness. An interpretative phenomenological analysis study was undertaken using semistructured, audio-recorded interviews with 26 young people diagnosed with depression. The findings present two contrasting themes in the data, which reflect the young people's views about the influence of families and significant others in helping them cope with depression. The first, being supportive, highlighted how families and significant others helped through patience, tolerance, understanding, and encouragement; all of which strengthened young people's resilience as they attempted to cope with depression. The second theme, being unsupportive, showed how, in the young people's view, family conflict and change, and living in an unsupportive environment, compromised their ability to cope with depression. The findings suggest that mental health nurses, other clinicians, and primary care practitioners need to increase families' and significant others' understandings of depression and their capacity to support young people in these circumstances.

Heart rate responses to parental behavior in depressed adolescents

In order to more fully understand the abnormalities in emotional responding associated with adolescent depression we examined clinically depressed and non-depressed adolescents' physiological responses to their parents' negative emotional behavior, as indexed by their heart rate responses to parental angry and dysphoric behavior during laboratory-based interactions. Maternal angry and dysphoric behavior predicted heart rate deceleration amongst non-depressed adolescents, a response that was not observed in depressed adolescents. Fathers' angry behavior predicted significant heart rate acceleration in depressed (but not non-depressed) adolescents, whereas fathers' dysphoric behavior predicted heart rate deceleration amongst depressed but not amongst non-depressed adolescents. These findings are interpreted within the framework of orienting and defense cardiac responses, and suggest that reactivity in adolescent depression is characterized by the absence of a normative orienting response toward aversive maternal behaviors, and a defensive physiological response to aggressive paternal behavior.