Childhood adversities in relation to psychiatric disorders.

Substantial evidence has documented that adverse childhood experiences exert deleterious effects on mental health. It is less clear to what extent specific maltreatment during specific developmental periods may vary between disorders rather than increasing vulnerability for any particular disorder. The present comparison of characteristics of childhood adversity (type and frequency of adversity, developmental period) between major depressive disorder (MDD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), schizophrenia, and psychiatrically healthy subjects examined how effects of adverse childhood experiences vary between disorders.

Neuromagnetic indication of dysfunctional emotion regulation in affective disorders.

Dysfunctional emotion regulation is often reported in affective disorders, but it is unclear whether this dysfunction concerns initial processing of emotional input or regulation of resulting emotion. The present study addressed these aspects in 27 depressive and 15 borderline personality disorder patients and 28 healthy controls who were instructed to either passively view unpleasant and neutral pictures or downregulate emotional responses by reappraisal, while neuromagnetic brain activity was measured. All three groups showed more early response to unpleasant than to neutral pictures, whereas patients failed to show subsequent activity suppression under instructions to down-regulate.