Existing scales mainly focus on danger-based threats of death and bodily harm to assess exposure to traumatic events in war zone. However, major provocations and transgression of deeply held values and moral beliefs, as well as witnessing the suffering of others can be as traumatic as fear-inducing danger-based events. This raises the need for scales that assess both danger- and nondanger-based events among soldiers operating in modern war zones.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Problematic anger, characterized by excessive frequency, intensity, and duration of anger which causes substantial emotional distress and functional interference, poses a marked challenge in military populations. Despite its importance, research on this topic is limited. This study contributes to the literature by exploring problematic anger in a large sample of Norwegian military personnel who served in NATO missions in Afghanistan.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUsing latent profile analyses, the current work investigated levels of adverse childhood experiences, symptoms of anxiety and depression and 3 dimensions of relational promotive factors) to identify resilience profiles in a large general population sample (N = 161,622, mean age = 53.02; SD = 17.80; 56.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPunitive attitudes and consequences (e.g., incarceration) for prenatal illicit drug use persist in the United States despite evidence that these policies are ineffective and even harmful to women and children.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough interventions that promote child-supportive parenting for children have been shown to positively impact caregiving behaviors as well as child behavioral and neurobiological functioning, less is known about which aspects of maternal brain functioning are affected by such interventions. In the present study, we conducted a preliminary evaluation of the impact of the Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND) video coaching program on mothers with at least one child age four or younger. We employed a waitlist control design with pre-post data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this study, we utilized a novel fMRI paradigm to examine the behavioral and neural correlates of parenting self-evaluation in a sample of mothers with at least one child under the age of 4 (N = 37). Prior self-report, behavioral and observational research document the implications of parenting self-evaluations for parent well-being and caregiving behavior; however, relatively little is known about the neural circuitry underlying these self-referential processes and to what extent they are influenced by caregiving experience. Although neuroimaging paradigms indexing other aspects of parental function exist, this is the first to use functional neuroimaging to study parenting self-evaluation in a controlled laboratory setting.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this article, we focus on applying methods of translational neuroscience to two-generation, family-based interventions. In recent years, a small but growing body of evidence has documented the reversibility of some of the neurobiological effects of early adversity in the context of environmental early interventions. Some of these interventions are now being implemented at scale, which may help reduce disparities in the face of early life stress.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Rev Clin Psychol
January 2017
Early adverse experiences are well understood to affect development and well-being, placing individuals at risk for negative physical and mental health outcomes. A growing literature documents the effects of adversity on developing neurobiological systems. Fewer studies have examined stress neurobiology to understand how to mitigate the effects of early adversity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite burgeoning evidence linking early exposure to child maltreatment (CM) to deficits in self-regulation, the pathways to strong regulatory development in these children are not well understood, and significant heterogeneity is observed in their outcomes. Experiences of autonomy may play a key role in transmitting self-regulatory capacity across generations and help explain individual differences in maltreatment outcomes. In this study, we investigated multigenerational associations between Generation 1 (G1)-Generation 2 (G2) mothers' early experience of warmth and autonomy in relation to their own mothers and their Generation 3 (G3) children's autonomic physiological regulation in CM (n = 85) and non-CM (n = 128) families.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders has become increasingly medicalized (Conrad & Slodden, 2013), consideration for the relational nature of trauma has been minimized in the healing process. As psychiatrist R. D.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChild Abuse Negl
December 2014
Although poor parenting is known to be closely linked to self-regulation difficulties in early childhood, comparatively little is understood about the role of other risk factors in the early caregiving environment (such as a parent's own experiences of childhood abuse) in developmental pathways of self-regulation into adolescence. Using a longitudinal design, this study aimed to examine how a mother's history of abuse in childhood relates to her offspring's self-regulation difficulties in preadolescence. Maternal controlling parenting and exposure to intimate partner aggression in the child's first 24-36 months were examined as important early social and environmental influences that may explain the proposed connection between maternal abuse history and preadolescent self-regulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInfant faces are highly salient social stimuli that appear to elicit intuitive parenting behaviors in healthy adult women. Behavioral and observational studies indicate that this effect may be modulated by experiences of reproduction, caregiving, and psychiatric symptomatology that affect normative attention and reward processing of infant cues. However, relatively little is known about the neural correlates of these effects.
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