Adolescent resilience research differs from risk research by focusing on the assets and resources that enable some adolescents to overcome the negative effects of risk exposure. We discuss three models of resilience-the compensatory, protective, and challenge models-and describe how resilience differs from related concepts. We describe issues and limitations related to resilience and provide an overview of recent resilience research related to adolescent substance use, violent behavior, and sexual risk behavior. We then discuss implications that resilience research has for intervention and describe some resilience-based interventions.

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ADOLESCENT RESILIENCE: A Framework for Understanding Healthy Development in the Face of Risk

This article reviews behavioral-genetic research to show how it can help address questions of causation in developmental psychopathology. The article focuses on studies of antisocial behavior, because these have been leading the way in investigating environmental as well as genetic influences on psychopathology. First, the article illustrates how behavioral-genetic methods are being newly applied to detect the best candidates for genuine environmental causes among the many risk factors for antisocial behavior. Second, the article examines findings of interaction between genes and environments (G x E) associated with antisocial behavior, outlining steps for testing hypotheses of measured G x E. Third, the article envisages future work on gene-environment interplay, arguing that it is an interesting and profitable way forward for psychopathology research.

The New Look of Behavioral Genetics in Developmental Psychopathology: Gene-Environment Interplay in Antisocial Behaviors.

Background Children of depressed mothers have elevated conduct problems, presumably because maternal depression disrupts the caregiving environment. Alternatively, the association between maternal depression and children’s antisocial behavior (ASB) may come about because (1) depressed women are likely to have comorbid antisocial personality traits, (2) depressed women are likely to mate and bear children with antisocial men, or (3) children of depressed mothers inherit a genetic liability for psychopathology. Method We used data from the E-Risk Study, a representative British cohort of 1116 twin pairs assessed at 5 and 7 years of age. We tested for environmental mediation of the association between maternal depression during the children’s first 5 years of life and children’s ASB at age 7 years, free from familial liability for ASB. Results Maternal depression occurring after, but not before, the twins’ birth was associated with child ASB and showed a significant dose-response relationship with child ASB at 7 years of age. Parental history of ASPD symptoms accounted for approximately one third of the observed association between maternal depression and children’s ASB, but maternal depression continued to significantly predict children’s ASB. Intraindividual change analyses indicated that children exposed to their mother’s depression between ages 5 and 7 years showed a subsequent increase in ASB by age 7 years. The combination of depression and ASPD symptoms in mothers posed the greatest risk for children’s ASB. Conclusions Studies ignoring genetic transmission overestimate social transmission effects because both genetic and environmental processes are involved in creating risk for ASB in children of depressed mothers. Interventions for depressed mothers aiming to reduce conduct problems in their children should address parents’ antisocial personality, as well as mothers’ depression.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/articlepdf/208278/yoa40010.pdf

Maternal depression and children's antisocial behavior: nature and nurture effects.

Quality of mothering relies on the integrity of multiple physiological and behavioral systems and on two maternal factors, one proximal and one distal, that have a great impact on how a mother mothers: postpartum depression and early experiences. To mother appropriately requires the action of systems that regulate sensation, perception, affect, reward, executive function, motor output and learning. When a mother is at risk to engage in less than optimal mothering, such as when she is depressed or has experienced adversity in childhood, the function of many or all of maternal and related systems may be affected. In this paper, we will review what is currently known about the biological basis of mothering, with attention to literature on hormones but with a particular focus on recent advances in the fields of functional neuroimaging. Instead of discussing strictly ‘maternal’ brain imaging studies, we instead use a systems approach to survey important findings relevant to brain systems integral to and/or strongly related to the mothering experience: (a) social behavior; (b) reward and affect; (c) executive function; and (d) maternal behavior. We find that there are many commonalities in terms of the brain regions identified across these systems and, as we would expect, all are sensitive to the influence of, or function differently in the context of, depression and adverse early experience. It is likely that the similarity and cross-talk between maternal, affect and stress systems, observed behaviorally, hormonally and in the context of brain function, allows for mood disturbance and early adverse experiences to have a significant impact on the quality of mothering and the motivation to mother. Keywords: Adversity, maternal depression, brain imaging, parenting, mothers.

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Annual Research Review: All mothers are not created equal: neural and psychobiological perspectives on mothering and the importance of individual differences

The aim of this integrative review was to identify the protective factors that contribute to family resiliency. Families are comprised of individuals who interact across levels in a socio-ecological system. Family resiliency does not develop through evasion of risk, but through successful application of protective factors to engage in adverse situations and emerge from them stronger. In an effort to move away from pathological labelling, this review provides a foundation for strength-based family interventions. Thirteen peerreviewed databases were searched for articles and information regarding family resiliency. Careful review yielded 24 protective factors that foster resiliency across three distinct but interactive levels: individual, family and community. The protective factors identified in this review of the literature offer an excellent starting point for development of clinical interventions to support family resiliency.

Fostering family resiliency: a review of the key protective factors

The recurrence of social, behavioral, and health problems in successive generations of families is a prevalent theme in both the scientific and popular literatures. This review discusses recent conceptual models and findings from longitudinal studies concerning the intergenerational transfer of psychosocial risk, including intergenerational continuity, and the processes whereby a generation of parents may place their offspring at elevated risk for social, behavioral, and health problems. Key findings include the mediational effects of parenting and environmental factors in the transfer of risk. In both girls and boys, childhood aggression and antisocial behavior appear to predict long-term trajectories that place offspring at risk. Sequelae of childhood aggression that may threaten the well-being of offspring include school failure, adolescent risk-taking behavior, early and single parenthood, and family poverty. These childhood and adolescent behavioral styles also predict harsh, aggressive, neglectful, and unstimulating parenting behavior toward offspring. Buffering factors within at-risk families include maternal educational attainment and constructive parenting practices (e.g., emotional warmth, consistent disciplinary practices, and cognitive scaffolding). These findings highlight the potential application and relevance of intergenerational studies for social, educational, and health policy.

The Intergenerational Transfer of Psychosocial Risk: Mediators of Vulnerability and Resilience

This review describes a recent approach to studying the intergenerational processes that place families and children at risk for a broad variety of social, behavioral, and health problems. Intergenerational studies typically involve two (or more) generations of participants, observed over time. These projects are utilized to study the origins and early determinants of parenting behavior and of other environmental, health, and social conditions that place young offspring at risk for continuing behavioral, cognitive, and health problems. Convergent findings, across a broad range of research populations in several countries, suggest that problematic parenting develops in part through learning the behavior modeled by one's own parents. In addition, problematic parenting seems to be an extension of an individual's early style of aggressive and problematic social behavior. Parents with a history of childhood aggression, in particular, tend to have continuing social, behavioral, and health difficulties, as do th...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/20182860.pdf

Intergenerational Studies of Parenting and the Transfer of Risk From Parent to Child

The current investigation was designed to examine the provision of cognitive stimulation to preschool-aged children from high-risk families. Participants were drawn from the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project, a prospective, longitudinal investigation of individuals recruited in 1976–77 from lower SES neighbourhoods who were rated by childhood peers on standardised scales of aggression and social withdrawal. Based on a subsample of women followed from childhood to motherhood (N = 51), we found that childhood behaviour patterns, particularly a history of aggression, negatively predicted cognitive stimulation to preschool-aged offspring, in the context of (1) scaffolding during a structured teaching task, and (2) the quality of the home environment provided for children. In the second part of the study, concurrent analyses focusing on children’s cognitive competence (N = 80) revealed that parental stimulation predicts the intellectual functioning of preschool-aged offspring within a community-based, high-r...

Nurturing cognitive competence in preschoolers: A longitudinal study of intergenerational continuity and risk

This study demonstrates the potential utility of the Behavioural Style Observational System (BSOS) as a new observational measure of children's behavioural style The BSOS is an objective, short and easy to use measure that can be readily adapted to a variety of home and laboratory situations In the present study, 160 mother–child dyads from the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project (CLRP) were observed during an 11-min behavioural sample Videotaped interactions were coded using the BSOS for children's mood, activity level, vocal reactivity, approach to toys, mood consistency and adaptability Comparisons between the BSOS observational ratings and mothers' ratings of the child on the EAS Temperament Survey (EAS) provided support for modest congruence between these two measurement systems, and revealed a differential predictive pattern of children's functioning Specifically, the observation-based BSOS predicted children's cognitive performance and adaptive behaviour during testing, whereas the mother-rated EAS predicted maternal ratings of children's internalizing and externalizing behaviour problems Both measures were found to independently predict mothers' ratings of parenting stress Overall, the findings imply that neither observational measures nor maternal ratings alone are sufficient to understand children's behavioural style, and that comprehensive evaluations of children's temperament should optimally include both types of measures Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Jennifer Karp

Papers

The Intergenerational Transfer of Psychosocial Risk: Mediators of Vulnerability and Resilience

Intergenerational Studies of Parenting and the Transfer of Risk From Parent to Child

Nurturing cognitive competence in preschoolers: A longitudinal study of intergenerational continuity and risk

An observational measure of children's behavioural style: Evidence supporting a multi-method approach to studying temperament