Positive life changes during the COVID-19 pandemic moderate the association between mothers' COVID-related stressors and psychopathology.

Background: Ample research has documented the potential of both negative and positive impacts secondary to the COVID-19 pandemic on global mental health in adults and families, but less work has focused on mothers who experience economic marginalization. This longitudinal study aims to assess the impact of positive changes from the pandemic on the association between COVID-related stressors and psychopathology before and after the start of the pandemic.

Methods: Seventy-five mothers from low income, economically marginalized backgrounds (mean age=30 years, 80 % Black) completed a pre-pandemic visit (T1;2015-2019) and an online survey (T2;2020-2021) mid-pandemic.

Pre-COVID respiratory sinus arrhythmia moderates associations between COVID-19 stress and child externalizing behaviors: Testing neurobiological stress theories.

Exposure to stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic contributes to psychopathology risk, yet not all children are negatively impacted. The current study examined a parasympathetic biomarker of stress sensitivity, respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), as a moderator of the effects of exposure to pandemic stress on child internalizing and externalizing behaviors in a sample of children experiencing economic marginalization. Three to five years pre-pandemic, when children were preschool-aged, RSA during baseline and a challenging parent-child interaction were collected.

Intimate partner violence and preschool self-regulation: Examining the role of maternal emotion socialization in Black families.

The ways that parents respond to children's negative emotions shape the development of self-regulation across early childhood. The objective of this study was to examine child self-regulation in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure in a sample of Black, economically marginalized mothers and their young children (aged 3-5 years, = 99). The study investigates the conditional effects of emotion socialization practices that (1) encourage expression of and problem-solving around negative affect ("supportive"), and (2) encourage suppression of affective displays ("suppressive") on children's self-regulation.

The effectiveness and acceptability of empirically supported treatments in gender minority youth across four randomized controlled trials.

Objective: Gender minority youth (i.e., children/adolescents whose gender identity and/or expression is inconsistent with their birth-assigned sex) experience elevated rates of emotional and behavioral problems relative to cisgender youth (who identify with their birth-assigned sex), which are not intrinsic to gender identity but attributable to unique minority stressors.

Measurement and correlates of irritability in clinically referred youth: Further examination of the Affective Reactivity Index.

Background: Research on youth irritability has proliferated in recent years, largely facilitated by items from existing measures and by key new instruments like the Affective Reactivity Index (ARI). The present study extends this literature by investigating the psychometric properties of the parent- and youth-report ARI and the correlates of irritability in an independent, clinically referred sample.

Method: Baseline assessment data were collected from 237 youths (ages 3-18; 36% female) and their parents, seen for outpatient therapy and/or assessment.