Operationalizing psychological trauma in pregnancy: A systematic review.

Objective: Psychological trauma can affect health and well-being across the lifespan but may be significantly impactful, with intergenerational consequences, during pregnancy. However, there appears to be no uniform agreement on the operationalization of psychological trauma in pregnancy. Such agreement is critical for the translation of research findings into clinical care.

Scanning for Representation: A Scoping Review of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in MRI Studies of the Maternal Brain.

A growing number of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies are examining brain changes across pregnancy and early motherhood, gaining fundamental insight into the neural adaptations of motherhood, with critical clinical and policy implications for supporting mother, child, and family unit. As the field takes off, now is the time to take stock of the current literature and neuroscience practices, to ensure that the field is based on studies that are robust, representative, and transparent. Here, we conducted a scoping review to understand the racial and ethnic diversity of participants reported in MRI studies of the maternal brain, guided by the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology.

A systematic review on the assessment of pregnancy-specific psychological trauma during pregnancy: A call to action.

Objective: Psychological trauma negatively impacts maternal and infant health during the perinatal period. A history of traumatic experiences related to previous pregnancies and births (termed pregnancy-specific psychological trauma or PSPT) increases the risk of a host of psychological disorders. It can impede women's/the pregnant individual's relationship with the healthcare system and their developing child.

Global variation in the assessment of psychological trauma in pregnancy.

A history of psychologically traumatic experiences can impact health outcomes for pregnant people and their infants. The perception and prevalence of traumatic experiences during pregnancy may differ by geographical region. To better understand trends in how and what kinds of psychological trauma are assessed globally, we conducted a secondary analysis on a larger systematic review examining psychological trauma measurement in pregnancy.

Maternal childhood trauma, caregiving behavior, and child cognitive development in the context of drug addiction.

Exposure to childhood trauma confers intergenerational risk on child development. However, the mechanism linking a mother's childhood trauma with her child's cognitive development remains poorly understood. This study recruited 71 mother-child dyads affected by substance use disorder from local, community-based, outpatient substance use treatment programs.

The Paper Chase: A Team Science Training Exercise.

Over the past few decades of psychological research, there has been an important increase in both the application of multidisciplinary or collaborative science and in training and research that emphasizes social justice and cultural humility. In the current paper, we report on the use of the "Paper Chase" as a team science training and research experience that also facilitates cultural humility in research and when working in teams. The Paper Chase is a synchronous writing exercise originally conceptualized by a cohort of health service psychology interns to reduce lag time between manuscript writing and submission (Schaumberg et al.

Maternal psychological risk and the neural correlates of infant face processing: A latent profile analysis.

Maternal psychological factors, including anxiety, depression, and substance use, may negatively affect parenting. Previous works with mothers have often assessed each of these factors in isolation despite their frequent co-occurrence. Psychological factors have also been associated with neural processing of facial stimuli, specifically the amplitude (i.

Awareness of Narrative Identity Questionnaire (ANIQ) in Early Adolescents: Psychometric Evaluation and Association with Features of Personality Disorder.

Identity formation is central to adolescent development. Challenges in establishing a stable sense of self is associated with maladaptive identity function, which has been recognized as a core feature of personality pathology. The narrative identity framework offers a unique lens to garner salient information about one's sense of self.

COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, vaccination, and mental health: A national study among U.S. parents.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to increased mental health concerns among parents. Emerging studies have shown links between COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and psychological distress, including among parents. The primary aim of this study was to extend these emerging findings by examining the role of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in mental health functioning in a national sample of U.

A U.S. National Study of Family Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the lives of children and their caregivers. Recent research has examined the impact of the pandemic on child and caregiver functioning but there is a paucity of work examining the impact of the pandemic on the broader family system. The current study examined family resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic across three aims: Aim 1 tested whether meaning, control, and emotion systems form a unitary family adaption factor, Aim 2 evaluated a concurrent model of family resilience, and Aim 3 examined whether parent gender and vaccination status moderated paths in the final model.

Testing an integrated dimensional model of adverse childhood experiences: Associations with COVID-19 outcomes.

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a salient risk factor for a myriad of negative outcomes. Extant theoretical and empirical models traditionally quantify the impact of ACEs using cumulative representations. Recent conceptualizations challenge this framework and theorize that the types of ACEs children are exposed to differentially impacts their future functioning.

Threat versus deprivation in mother's childhood: Differential relations to hair cortisol and psychopathology in pregnancy.

Background: The negative effects of childhood maltreatment can be intergenerational, and the prenatal period may play an important role in this intergenerational transmission. Maternal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis dysfunction and maternal psychopathology represent two mechanisms through which the effects of childhood maltreatment are hypothesized to be transmitted across generations.

Objective: This study first sought to extend prior research on pathways of intergenerational transmission by examining whether mothers' childhood experiences of abuse versus neglect differentially relate to maternal HPA activity and to maternal psychopathology during the prenatal period.

Racial disparities in EEG research and their implications for our understanding of the maternal brain.

Racial disparities in maternal health are alarming and persistent. Use of electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERPs) to understand the maternal brain can improve our knowledge of maternal health by providing insight into mechanisms underlying maternal well-being, including implications for child development. However, systematic racial bias exists in EEG methodology-particularly for Black individuals-and in psychological and health research broadly.

The Development and Validation of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-8: Providing Respondents with a Uniform Context That Elicits Thinking About Situations Requiring Emotion Regulation.

Emotion regulation difficulties are associated with a range of psychological disorders. A widely used measure of emotion regulation is the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS-36). There are also three shortened DERS versions.

Psychometric Properties of the Parent and Youth Versions of the Inadequate Boundaries Questionnaire in Community and Clinical Samples of Adolescents.

The Inadequate Boundaries Questionnaire (IBQ) was created as a multi-dimensional measure of boundary violations in parent-child relationships. Use of the IBQ has been increasing; however, its psychometric properties, including its proposed five-factor structure, have yet to be comprehensively evaluated. The current study examined the factor structure, reliability, mother-adolescent agreement, and convergent and discriminant validity of the IBQ-Parent and -Youth English versions among community and clinical adolescents and their mothers.

Hope and mental health problems among orphans and vulnerable children in South Africa.

There are over three million orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) currently living in South Africa. OVC are at high risk for a number of negative outcomes, including poor mental health. Hope has been associated with well-being among youth, including youth in South Africa.

Emotion regulation strategies and perceived stress during pregnancy in expectant mothers and fathers.

Background: Stress during pregnancy can increase physical and mental health risks in parents and offspring. Emotion regulation (ER) may protect against prenatal stress; however, ER is understudied in expectant parents, particularly expectant fathers. This study aimed to evaluate associations between ER strategies (reappraisal, suppression, ratio of suppression-to-reappraisal) and perceived stress among expectant parents, and also test whether expectant mothers and fathers differed in ER strategy use and perceived stress levels.

Maternal interpersonal problems and attachment security in adolescent offspring.

Background: Research on parent-level factors linked to adolescent attachment security would inform interventions to prevent or reduce youth psychopathology and other negative outcomes. The current study examined one relevant parent-level variable: maternal interpersonal problems. Interpersonal problems, a key characteristic of personality pathology, are well described by the interpersonal circumplex (IPC) and have been shown to be associated with maladaptive adult attachment in close/romantic relationships; however, studies have not examined relationships with offspring attachment.

Behavioral, Affective, and Cognitive Parenting Mechanisms of Child Internalizing and Externalizing Problems during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased mental health concerns, including depression and anxiety among parents and internalizing and externalizing problems among youth. To better understand the mechanisms and moderators of child mental health during the pandemic, the current study tested two moderated mediation models in which parent depression and anxiety indirectly impacted child internalizing and externalizing problems through negative effects on multiple parenting variables, with these associations moderated by families' exposure to COVID-19-stressors. A national sample representative of U.

Racial and demographic disparities in emergency department utilization for mental health concerns before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study investigated whether emergency department (ED) visits for mental health concerns increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, taking a health disparities lens. ED encounters from the only academic medical center in Mississippi were extracted from March-December 2019 and 2020, totaling 2,842 pediatric (ages 4-17) and 17,887 adult (ages 18-89) patients. Visits were coded based on primary ED diagnosis.

Emotion regulation during pregnancy: a call to action for increased research, screening, and intervention.

This paper serves as a call to action for increased focus on emotion regulation during pregnancy. We make this case by summarizing the limited research to date on this topic, which has demonstrated that emotion regulation in pregnant people has important mental health, caregiving, and developmental correlates throughout the perinatal period. Given its crosscutting and modifiable nature, bolstering emotion regulation during pregnancy has the potential for considerable intergenerational consequences, and it is critical to further investigate this construct.

Interpersonal trust in adolescents with psychiatric disorders and borderline pathology.

Background: Adolescents with features of borderline personality disorder (BPD) may experience deficits in interpersonal trust; however, a simultaneous comparison of interpersonal trust among adolescents with BPD, other psychiatric disorders, and no psychiatric conditions (healthy controls) has never been conducted.

Objective: The aims of this study were to 1) explore differences in interpersonal trust (emotional trust, honesty beliefs, and reliability beliefs) between these three groups, and 2) examine the incremental value of BPD features in association with interpersonal trust over and above internalizing and externalizing.

Method: Adolescents ( = 445, 67.

Testing the Link Between Mothers' General Reflective Function Capacity and Adolescent Borderline Personality Features: Perceived Parenting Behaviors as a Potential Mechanism.

Impairments in mothers' reflective function (RF), the ability to imagine the mental states of the self and others, underlies maladaptive parenting strategies, which have been associated with borderline personality disorder (BPD). The current study evaluated the association between mother's RF and adolescents' BPD and the mediating role of a range of parenting behaviors. Five hundred and thirty-one inpatient adolescents and their mothers participated in the current study.

Interpersonal Problems in Parents and Adolescent Borderline Personality Disorder Features.

Research shows that parental personality pathology is associated with borderline personality disorder features and internalizing/externalizing symptoms in offspring. However, studies have been limited by -based assessments of parental personality pathology. The authors leveraged evidence that interpersonal problems described by the Interpersonal Circumplex align with Criterion A of the Alternative Model for Personality Disorders and therefore used a measure of interpersonal problems to capture parental personality pathology.

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.