Since the early 1970s, Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson, Collins and others have been following a large cohort of children from the sixth month of the mother’s pregnancy through to the present. Eighty-five percent of the 212 at 24 months are still in the study close to three decades later. Early losses occurred before the decision was made to change the initial shorter study (started by Egeland, a psychologist, and Deinard, a pediatrician) to a longitudinal study. The authors noted that the losses were in the most high stress and unstable of the families.

The families were chosen intentionally to include caregivers who may present parenting difficulties by selecting first born children to mothers who qualified for public assistance for prenatal care and delivery. Poverty was the marker that would ensure this. They were careful to note that these mothers had a wide variety of backgrounds and degrees of support available, thus also ensuring a wide range of outcomes 28 years later (the age now under study).

The authors started with an excellent overview of the challenges faced, the key claims and guide to the book, conceptual and theoretical supports, organizing perspective and assessments. Understanding the frequency, breadth and depth of the assessments with over 10,000 resultant variables is crucial to giving credence to the resulting conclusions. The strength of this work comes not just from the lessons learned about development, change and continuity but from the impressive evidence that places the lessons on a firm foundation and the even more fascinating predictability about development that emerged from the data.

Throughout the book, it is easily possible to pull out sentences that may have made intuitive clinical sense but are now backed up with statistics (kept to an appropriate minimum since background papers are well-referenced). For instance: by heightening and chronically emitting signals of need toward an only intermittently responsive caregiver, a resistant attachment organization is established which is correlated with anxiety disorders at age 17½. By minimizing signals of need that may further alienate rejecting caregivers, an avoidant attachment organization is established which shows a connection to externalizing behavioural disorders through early childhood and adolescence. Anxious attachment in general, with no distinction between avoidance and resistance, was associated with depression. There are remarkable parallels between how mothers responded to tasks with their children at 24 months and the same children more than 20 years later, responding to their own 24-month-old children.

Other conclusions have implications for prevention and intervention. In breaking the cycle of abuse, three relationship factors were most helpful for the mothers: (1) receiving emotional support from an alternative non-abusive adult, therapy experience of at least six months, supportive and satisfying relationship with a mate; (2) ability to predict high school dropping out with 77% accuracy using only quality of care measures up to age 42 months; (3) boundary violators during middle childhood were less competent in dealing with mixed gender relationships during adolescence and were more likely to have mothers who were abused.

As interesting as any individual observation or prediction may have been, it is the general observations and conclusions about development that pull the work together and provide a framework that will be useful to clinicians, program planners and researchers for years to come. They include implications for classification systems such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, for treatment of specific disorders and for prevention and early intervention services. Above all, they have demonstrated that development is a lawful, understandable and predictable process when there have been multiple methods of assessment from multiple independent sources.

This is a book that I wish was written and that I had read as a resident. It’s not that there weren’t books about development, but they were based on the wisdom of clinical observation by gifted clinicians after years of work. What this group has contributed is the research basis for development, and in the process have given it a much more interactive and dynamic life than theory and clinicians have been able to do. They shift us from traits to interactions, from today’s preoccupation with genetics to the psychosocial environment, from blaming parents to acceptance of their unique histories and pasts, and, more importantly, from the unpredictable to the predictable.

Some time ago, when giving an invited talk about personality disorder from the perspective of a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I ended with the thought that we may be training our residents from the wrong end of life. They start out in the world of adult psychiatry and work backwards gradually. My thought was that we needed to start with infancy and the attachment process, then work forward into childhood, adolescence and adulthood. This book has shifted my ‘clinical’ thought into a research base. If we understood the results of this book and the developmental process and predictability, we would practice a more researched based therapy with each growing stage of life.

This book represents the summary of a lifetime dedication by many researchers to the mental health and well-being of children and youth and makes this dedication available to all of us who work with and care about children and youth in society. They deserve not only our thanks, but more importantly, our attention.

Now that the work has been done, the book has been written, it is time for you to read it and then recommend it to every psychiatry resident beginning their career.

The Development of the Person: The Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth to Adulthood

The ongoing longitudinal Adverse Childhood Experiences Study of adults has found significant associations between chronic conditions; quality of life and life expectancy in adulthood; and the traum...

Adverse childhood experiences: assessing the impact on health and school engagement and the mitigating role of resilience.

Pituitary-Adrenal and Autonomic Responses to Stress in Women After Sexual and Physical Abuse in Childhood

Since the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was announced, we had an unprecedented change in the way we organize ourselves socially and in our daily routine. Children and adolescents were also greatly impacted by the abrupt withdrawal from school, social life and outdoor activities. Some of them also experienced domestic violence growing. The stress they are subjected to directly impacts their mental health on account of increased anxiety, changes in their diets and in school dynamics, fear or even failing to scale the problem. Our aim is to bring up a discussion under different aspects and to alert public health and government agents about the need for surveillance and care of these individuals. We hope that the damage to their mental health as a result of the side effect of this pandemic can be mitigated by adequate and timely intervention.

COVID-19 pandemic impact on children and adolescents' mental health: Biological, environmental, and social factors.

Thank you very much for downloading the sage sourcebook of advanced data analysis methods for communication research. Maybe you have knowledge that, people have search numerous times for their favorite readings like this the sage sourcebook of advanced data analysis methods for communication research, but end up in harmful downloads. Rather than enjoying a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they are facing with some malicious virus inside their laptop.

The Sage Sourcebook Of Advanced Data Analysis Methods For Communication Research

https://www.childpsych.theclinics.com/article/S1056-4993(14)00003-0/pdf

The Biological Effects of Childhood Trauma

Changes in adolescents' motivations and capabilities pose unique challenges to parents who play a continuing role in ensuring the youth's safety and well-being. We describe sensitively attuned parenting as an optimal response to this challenge and summarize practices of positive engagement, supervision/guidance and open communication that support sensitive attunement and facilitate the continuing development of the adolescent's self-confidence, autonomous decision-making, and communication skills. We then consider factors that require parents to adapt their practices to the particular needs and developmental level of the adolescent. Individual differences that may challenge parent's effectiveness in implementing these practices include: biological vulnerabilities, differential sensitivity to parenting, relationship history and temperament. Clinical interventions that seek to improve parenting offer an opportunity to test sensitive attunement as a mechanism for reducing adolescents' symptoms and problem behaviors.

Adapting to the changing needs of adolescents: parenting practices and challenges to sensitive attunement.

Objective Although there are currently several efficacious treatments for depressed and suicidal adolescents, less is known about predictors and moderators of adolescents' treatment response. A growing literature has identified family functioning as a prognostic indicator of adolescents' likelihood of benefiting from treatment. The current study tested both observational and perceived measures of family functioning as indicators of adolescents' response to 2 treatment conditions. Method The sample consisted of 129 depressed and suicidal adolescents (Mage = 14.96, 82.9% female, 56% Black/African American) who were randomized to attachment-based family therapy or family-enhanced nondirective supportive therapy (Diamond et al., 2019). Baseline assessments of family functioning included ratings of parent-adolescent communication coded with the Goal-Corrected Partnership in Adolescence Coding System (Lyons-Ruth, Hennighausen, & Holmes, 2005) and adolescent and parent reports of Family Conflict and Cohesion from the Self-Report of Family Functioning (Bloom, 1985). Results Adolescents who engaged in more uncooperative communication with their parents during a 10-min conflict discussion showed greater reductions in depressive symptoms in both treatments. Adolescents from traditionally underserved (non-White or lower income) families showed greater reductions in suicidal ideation in both treatments. Conclusions Attachment-based family therapy and family-enhanced nondirective supportive therapy were most effective for adolescents from traditionally underserved families and adolescents who engaged in less cooperative communication with their caregivers. Observational ratings of parent-adolescent communication were better prognostic indicators of treatment response than were self-reported indicators of global family functioning. Implications for generalizing these results to other treatments for depressed and suicidal adolescents are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Parent-teen communication predicts treatment benefit for depressed and suicidal adolescents.

Objective Although several treatments have been shown to be effective in treatment of youth suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs), there is a pressing need to account for the substantial variation in adolescents’ response to and outcomes from these treatments. Method Secondary analyses of data from a 16-week randomized trial of Attachment-Based Family Therapy (ABFT) and Family-Enhanced NonDirective Supportive Therapy (FE-NST) identified distinct classes of adolescents’ treatment response. Established risk factors for STBs, along with treatment condition and sociodemographic variables, were then tested as predictors of class membership. Results Three patterns of adolescents’ treatment response and outcome were identified: a) nonresponders (15.8%), b) good responders (57.5%), and c) partial responders (26.7%). After controlling for initial symptom severity, nonresponders were more likely to have higher levels of nonsuicidal self-injury and pessimism and were more likely to meet diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder (MDD) than good or partial responders. Partial responders were more likely than good responders to meet criteria for MDD and to have higher perceived burdensomeness. Conclusion Although most adolescents showed significant symptom reductions with both treatments, adolescents with higher pretreatment levels of pessimism, MDD, nonsuicidal self-injury, and perceived burdensomeness were less likely to show an optimal pattern of treatment benefit. The findings point to heterogeneity in treatment response that may require adapting treatments for adolescents with these pretreatment profiles. Clinical trial registration information Attachment-Based Family Therapy for Suicidal Adolescents; http://clinicaltrials.gov ; NCT01537419 .

Predicting Patterns of Treatment Response and Outcome for Adolescents Who Are Suicidal and Depressed

Insecure attachment styles have consistently been identified as risk factors for adolescent psychopathology and, more specifically, suicidal ideation. However, much less is known about the mechanisms that account for the relationship between attachment styles and severity of suicidal ideation within clinical samples. In the current study, adolescents’ expectancies for caregiver availability and responsiveness were coded from transcripts of the Suicide Narrative Interview in a clinical sample of 129 depressed and suicidal adolescents. Results indicated that negative expectancies for caregiver availability in the Suicide Narrative Interview were associated both with attachment insecurity and with the intensity of adolescents’ suicidal ideation. The implications of adolescents’ expectancies for caregiver availability as targets for clinical intervention are discussed.

Abigail Zisk

Papers

The Biological Effects of Childhood Trauma

Adapting to the changing needs of adolescents: parenting practices and challenges to sensitive attunement.

Parent-teen communication predicts treatment benefit for depressed and suicidal adolescents.

Predicting Patterns of Treatment Response and Outcome for Adolescents Who Are Suicidal and Depressed

The Suicide Narrative Interview: adolescents' attachment expectancies and symptom severity in a clinical sample.