Emerging adulthood is the time when identity questions are addressed. It is also a time of excessive stress and risk for mental health problems. Different identity statuses relate to different mental health outcomes. Yet, little research has addressed how identity status is interlinked with trauma exposure and post-traumatic stress reactions, especially in multicultural contexts. The current study aimed to explore whether different traumatic experiences are related to the current identity status of university students aged between 18 and 29 years and investigate to what extent trauma-exposed emerging adults of different identity statuses report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD (CPTSD). In total, 2237 university students from Lithuania (n = 791) and Japan (n = 1345) participated in the current study. Identity profiles were revealed by using the Latent Class Analysis approach. Lithuania and Japan were comparable in terms of identity profiles and structure of PTSD/CPTSD. Trauma-exposed emerging adults reported a higher probability of being in troubled diffusion identity status; students in achievement identity status had a lower probability of CPTSD and lower rates of symptoms of disturbances in self-organization. The diffused identity of emerging adults from Lithuania and Japan is associated with trauma exposure, and positive identity is linked with fewer CPTSD reactions.

This study evaluated the role of bidirectional micro- and macro- level positive affect-related processes in the longitudinal coupling of depressive symptoms in parent-adolescent dyads. Using a measurement-burst design, including dyadic experience sampling methods (ESM) and monthly follow-ups over one year, this work investigated associations between (1) parental depressive symptoms and anhedonia and parental daily-life enhancing and dampening responses to youth positive affect; (2) parental daily-life enhancing and dampening and trajectories of youth positive affect, negative affect, and depressive symptoms across one year; and (3) youth developmental trajectories and prospective parental daily-life enhancing and dampening, and parental depressive symptoms and anhedonia at one-year follow-up. Participants included 146 early adolescents (52.1% girls, 47.9% boys; Mage[SD] = 12.71[.86]) and 139 parents (78.7% mothers; Mage[SD] = 44.11[5.08]). Parental enhancing and dampening were measured using a dyadic ESM procedure at baseline and 12-months. Youth completed monthtly questionnaires assessing depressive symptoms and trait positive and negative affect across 12 months. Parents reported on depressive symptoms and anhedonia at baseline and 12-months. Results showed that parental anhedonia negatively related to parental daily-life enhancing, and youths’ perceptions of their parents’ enhancing and dampening reciprocally related to youth emotional development across one year, with downstream implications for parents’ own symptoms of depression.

Understanding how youth perceive household economic hardship and how it relates to their behavior is vital given associations between hardship and behavioral development. Yet, most studies ignore youth’s own perceptions of economic hardship, instead relying solely on caregiver reports. Moreover, the literature has tended to treat economic hardship as a stable force over time, rather than a volatile one that varies month-to-month. This study addressed extant limitations by collecting monthly measures of economic hardship, specifically caregiver- and youth-reported material deprivation and youth-reported financial stress, and youth internalizing and externalizing problems from 104 youth–caregiver dyads (youth: 14–16 years, 55% female, 37% Black, 43% White) over nine months. We examined month-to-month variability of these constructs and how youth-reports of material deprivation and financial stress predicted their behavior problems, controlling for caregiver-reports of material deprivation. We found that hardship measures varied month-to-month (ICCs = 0.69–0.73), and youth-reported material deprivation positively predicted internalizing when examining both within- and between-individual variability (β = .19–.47). Youth-reported financial stress positively predicted within-individual variation in externalizing (β = .18), while youth reports of material deprivation predicted externalizing when looking between families (β = .41). Caregiver-reported material deprivation was unrelated to youth behavior when accounting for youth perceptions of economic hardship.

A large body of research demonstrates positive impacts of the Coping Power Program as a preventive intervention for youth behavioral outcomes, but potential collateral effects for caregivers is less known. The current study examined whether the youth-focused Coping Power Program can have a secondary impact on caregiver self-reported symptoms of depression and in turn result in longer-term impacts on child disruptive behavior problems including aggression, conduct problems and hyperactivity. Data from 360 youth/caregiver pairs across 8 waves of data (grades 4 through 10) were analyzed. We used two methodological approaches to (a) assess indirect effects in the presence of potential bidirectionality using timepoint-to-timepoint dynamic effects under Autoregressive Latent Trajectory modeling and (b) estimate scale scores in the presence of measurement non-invariance. Results showed that individually delivered Coping Power (ICP) produced greater direct effects on conduct problems and indirect effects on general externalizing and hyperactivity (through reductions in caregiver self-reported symptoms of depression), compared to group Coping Power (GCP). In comparison to GCP, ICP produced similar direct effects on reductions in caregiver depression. Child-focused prevention interventions can have an indirect impact on caregiver depression, which later shows improvements in longer-term reductions for child disruptive problems.

This 19-year prospective study applied a social development lens to the challenge of identifying long-term predictors of adult negative affectivity. A diverse community sample of 169 individuals was repeatedly assessed from age 13 to age 32 using self-, parent-, and peer-reports. As hypothesized, lack of competence establishing and maintaining close friendships in adolescence had a substantial long-term predictive relation to negative affectivity at ages 27–32, even after accounting for prior depressive, anxious, and externalizing symptoms. Predictions also remained robust after accounting for concurrent levels of depressive symptoms, indicating that findings were not simply an artifact of previously established links between relationship quality and depressive symptoms. Predictions also emerged from poor peer relationships within young adulthood to future relative increases in negative affectivity by ages 27–32. Implications for early identification of risk as well as for potential preventive interventions are discussed.

There is limited evidence on heterogenous co-developmental trajectories of internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) problems from childhood to adolescence and predictors of these joint trajectories. We utilized longitudinal data from Raine Study participants (n = 2393) to identify these joint trajectories from 5 to 17 years using parallel-process latent class growth analysis and analyze childhood individual and family risk factors predicting these joint trajectories using multinomial logistic regression. Five trajectory classes were identified: Low-problems (Low-INT/Low-EXT, 29%), Moderate Externalizing (Moderate-EXT/Low-INT, 26.5%), Primary Internalizing (Moderate High-INT/Low-EXT, 17.5%), Co-occurring (High-INT/High-EXT, 17%), High Co-occurring (Very High-EXT/High-INT, 10%). Children classified in Co-occurring and High Co-occurring trajectories (27% of the sample) exhibited clinically meaningful co-occurring problem behaviors and experienced more adverse childhood risk-factors than other three trajectories. Compared with Low-problems: parental marital problems, low family income, and absent father predicted Co-occurring and High Co-occurring trajectories; maternal mental health problems commonly predicted Primary Internalizing, Co-occurring, and High Co-occurring trajectories; male sex and parental tobacco-smoking uniquely predicted High Co-occurring membership; other substance smoking uniquely predicted Co-occurring membership; speech difficulty uniquely predicted Primary Internalizing membership; child’s temper-tantrums predicted all four trajectories, with increased odds ratios for High Co-occurring (OR = 8.95) and Co-occurring (OR = 6.07). Finding two co-occurring trajectories emphasizes the importance of early childhood interventions addressing comorbidity.

Although multiple domains of risk are theorized to predict adolescent delinquency, father-specific risk in the context of other risks is under-researched. Using the low-income Future of Families and Child Wellbeing cohort (48% Black, 27% Hispanic, 21% White, 51% boy, N = 4,255), the current study addressed three research questions. (1) are father-, mother-, child-, and family-level cumulative risk during early childhood associated with adolescent delinquent behavior?, (2) does child self-control in middle childhood mediate the associations between fathers’ and mothers’ cumulative risk and adolescent delinquent behavior, and do quality of parent’s relationships with children and parental monitoring in middle childhood mediate the association between child cumulative risk and delinquent behavior?, (3) do parenting, quality of parent-child relationships in middle childhood, and child sex at birth moderate the associations among fathers’, mothers’, children’s, and family risk and adolescent delinquent behavior? Results indicated father, child, and mother risk at ages 3–5 were significantly and positively associated with youth-reported delinquent behavior. Higher levels of family risk were associated with less delinquency when 9-year-olds felt closer to fathers than when they felt less close. Children’s self-control at age 9 mediated the associations between father and child risk and delinquent behavior.

Greater maternal depressive symptoms are consistently associated with higher levels of behavioral difficulties in children, emerging in early childhood and with long-lasting consequences for children’s development. Interventions promoting early relational health have been shown to have benefits for children’s behavior; however, these impacts are not always realized in the context of maternal depression. This study examined whether tiered programs could address this limitation by focusing on both parenting, through universal primary prevention, and psychosocial stressors and parent mental health, through tailored secondary prevention. Analysis of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the Smart Beginnings (SB) intervention was conducted to determine whether SB attenuated the association between maternal depression and early childhood internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Maternal depression significantly predicted both internalizing and externalizing behaviors in linear regression models. Further, there was a significant interaction between maternal depression and treatment group, such that among mothers with higher depressive symptoms, the SB treatment attenuated the magnitude of the association between depression and child behavior. Findings suggest that while parenting support is important for all families, it may be particularly critical for those with higher levels of depression and underscores the need to consider multidimensional family processes in both research and clinical practice.

Meta-analyses demonstrate that the quality of early attachment is modestly associated with peer social competence (r = .19) and externalizing behavior (r = −.15), but weakly associated with internalizing symptoms (r = −.07) across early development (Groh et al., Child Development Perspectives, 11(1), 70–76, 2017). Nonetheless, these reviews suffer from limitations that undermine confidence in reported estimates, including evidence for publication bias and the lack of comprehensive assessments of outcome measures from longitudinal studies in the literature. Moreover, theoretical claims regarding the specificity of the predictive significance of early attachment variation for socioemotional versus academic outcomes had not been evaluated when the analyses for this report were registered (but see Dagan et al., Child Development, 1–20, 2023; Deneault et al., Developmental Review, 70, 101093, 2023). To address these limitations, we conducted a set of registered analyses to evaluate the predictive validity of infant attachment in two landmark studies of the Strange Situation: the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) and the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD). Across-time composite assessments reflecting teacher report, mother report, and self-reports of each outcome measure were created. Bivariate associations between infant attachment security and socioemotional outcomes in the MLSRA were comparable to, or slightly weaker than, those reported in the recent meta-analyses, whereas those in the SECCYD were weaker for these outcomes. Controlling for four demographic covariates, partial correlation coefficients between infant attachment and all socioemotional outcomes were r ≤ .10 to .15 in both samples. Compositing Strange Situations at ages 12 and 18 months did not substantively alter the predictive validity of the measure in the MLSRA, though a composite measure of three different early attachment measures in the SECCYD did increase predictive validity coefficients. Associations between infant attachment security and academic skills were unexpectedly comparable to (SECCYD) or larger than (MLSRA) those observed with respect to socioemotional outcomes.

Self-concept becomes reliant on social comparison, potentially leading to excessive self-focused attention, persistently negative self-concept and increased risk for depression during early adolescence. Studies have implicated neural activation in cortical midline brain structures in self-related information processing, yet it remains unclear how this activation may underlie subjective self-concept and links to depression in adolescence. We examined these associations by assessing neural activity during negative vs. positive self-referential processing in 39 11-to-13-year-old girls. During a functional neuroimaging task, girls reported on their perceptions of self-concept by rating how true they believed positive and negative personality traits were about them. Girls reported on depressive symptoms at the scan and 6 months later. Activation in the dorsomedial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortexes (dMPFC; VLPFC), and visual association area was significantly associated with subjective self-concept and/or depressive symptoms at the scan or 6 months later. Exploratory models showed higher activation in the dMPFC to Self-negative > Self-positive was indirectly associated with concurrent depressive symptoms through more negative self-concept. Higher activation in the visual association area to Self-positive > Self-negative was associated with lower depressive symptoms at follow-up through more positive self-concept. Findings highlight how differential neural processing of negative versus positive self-relevant information maps onto perceptions of self-concept and adolescent depression.

Childhood maltreatment is associated with wide-ranging psychopathology at all stages of life. In the current study, we investigated whether posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) severity mediated the association between childhood maltreatment and internalizing and externalizing disorders among 262 South African trauma-exposed adolescents (aged 12–18 years). Childhood maltreatment and PTSD symptom severity were assessed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and the Child PTSD Checklist, respectively. Psychiatric disorders were assessed utilizing the Kiddie-Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia-Present and Lifetime version and were grouped into internalizing or externalizing disorders. Hierarchal logistic regression was used to assess the association of childhood maltreatment subtype with internalizing and externalizing disorders, controlling for age and gender, with PTSD symptom severity added to the final model. We found that sexual abuse was significantly associated with internalizing disorders, although this effect was no longer significant when PTSD was added to the model demonstrating that PTSD mediated the association between sexual abuse and internalizing disorders. Physical abuse, but not PTSD, was associated with externalizing disorders. Physical abuse, emotional neglect, and PTSD were associated with comorbid internalizing and externalizing disorders. These findings have implications for intervention and prevention strategies targeted at trauma-exposed adolescents with a history of childhood maltreatment.

Early life is a sensitive period when microbiota-gut-brain interactions may have important impact on development. This study investigated the associations of the gut microbiota in the first three years of life (two, six, and 12 weeks, and one and three years) with problem behavior and executive functions in N = 64 three-year-old children. Higher relative abundance of Streptococcus at the age of two weeks, as well as its trajectory over time (including ages two, six and 12 weeks, and one and three years), was related to worse executive functions. Higher relative abundance of [Ruminococcus] torques group at the age of three years, as well as its trajectory from one to three years, was associated with less internalizing behavior. Besides, several robust age-specific associations were identified: higher Bifidobacterium relative abundance (age three years) was associated with more internalizing and externalizing issues; higher Blautia relative abundance (age three years) was linked to less internalizing behavior; and increased relative abundance of an unidentified Enterobacteriaceae genus (age two weeks) was related to more externalizing behavior. Our findings provide important longitudinal evidence that early-life gut microbiota may be linked to behavioral and cognitive development in low-risk children.

Sensory differences and anxiety disorders are highly prevalent in autistic individuals with and without ADHD. Studies have shown that sensory differences and anxiety are associated and that intolerance of uncertainty (IU) plays an important role in this relationship. However, it is unclear as to how different levels of the sensory processing pathway (i.e., perceptual, affective, or behavioral) contribute. Here, we used psychophysics to assess how alterations in tactile perception contribute to questionnaire measures of sensory reactivity, IU, and anxiety. Thirty-eight autistic children (aged 8-12 years; 27 with co-occurring ADHD) were included. Consistent with previous findings, mediation analyses showed that child-reported IU fully mediated an association between parent-reported sensory reactivity and parent-reported anxiety and that anxiety partially mediated an association between sensory reactivity and IU. Of the vibrotactile thresholds, only simultaneous frequency discrimination (SFD) thresholds correlated with sensory reactivity. Interestingly, we found that sensory reactivity fully mediated an association between SFD threshold and anxiety, and between SFD threshold and IU. Taken together, those findings suggest a mechanistic pathway whereby tactile perceptual alterations contribute to sensory reactivity at the affective level, leading in turn to increased IU and anxiety. This stepwise association can inform potential interventions for IU and anxiety in autism.

Childhood maltreatment and mental health problems are common among young people placed out-of-home. However, evidence on the impact of maltreatment on the course of mental health problems in at-risk populations is sparse. The aim of this longitudinal study is twofold: (a) describe the course of mental health problems and the shift in symptom patterns among adolescents in youth residential care into young adulthood and (b) assess how childhood maltreatment is related to the course of mental health problems. One hundred and sixty-six adolescents in Swiss youth residential care were followed up into young adulthood (36.1% women; MAge-Baseline = 16.1 years; MAge-Follow-Up = 26.4 years). Latent transition analysis was employed to analyze transitions of symptom patterns and their association with maltreatment exposure. We found three latent classes of mental health problems: a “multiproblem”-class (51.8% baseline; 33.7% follow-up), a “low symptom”-class (39.2% baseline; 60.2% follow-up), and an “externalizing”-class (9.0% baseline; 6.0% follow-up). Individuals in the “multiproblem”-class were likely to transition towards less-complex symptom patterns. Higher severity of self-reported childhood maltreatment was associated with more complex and persistent mental health problems. Our study underlines the need for collaboration between residential and psychiatric care systems within and after care placements, with a specialized focus on trauma-informed interventions and care.

The finding that victims’ psychological problems tend to be exacerbated in lower-victimization classrooms has been referred to as the “healthy context paradox.” The current study has put the healthy context paradox to a strict test by examining whether classroom-level victimization moderates bidirectional within- and between-person associations between victimization and psychological adjustment. Across one school year, 3,470 Finnish 4th to 9th graders (Mage = 13.16, 46.1% boys) reported their victimization, depressive symptoms, anxiety, and self-esteem. Three types of multilevel models (cross-lagged panel, latent change score, and random-intercept cross-lagged panel) were estimated for each indicator of psychological adjustment. Findings indicated that the healthy context paradox emerges because classroom-level victimization moderates the prospective effect of victimization on psychological problems, rather than the effect of psychological problems on victimization. In classrooms with lower victimization, victims not only experience worse psychological maladjustment over time compared to others (between-person changes), but also higher maladjustment than before (absolute within-person changes).

Maternal perinatal depression (PND) and partnership problems have been identified to influence the development of later child adjustment difficulties. However, PND and partnership problems are closely linked which makes it difficult to draw conclusions about the exact transmission pathways. The aim of the present study was to investigate to what extent PND symptoms and partnership problems influence each other longitudinally and to examine the influence of their trajectories on child adjustment difficulties at the age of three. Analyses were based on publicly available data from the German family panel “pairfam”. N = 354 mothers were surveyed on depressive symptoms and partnership problems annually from pregnancy (T0) until child age three (T4). Child adjustment difficulties were assessed at age three. Results of latent change score modeling showed that partnership problems predicted change in PND symptoms at T0 and T3 while PND symptoms did not predict change in partnership problems. Child adjustment difficulties at age three were predicted by PND symptoms, but not by partnership problems. Partnership problems predicted externalizing, but not internalizing symptoms. Results underline the effects of family factors for the development of child adjustment difficulties and emphasize the importance of early interventions from pregnancy onwards

Maternal depressive symptoms (MDS) in the postnatal period may impact children’s later development through poorer quality parent-child interactions. The current study tested a specific pathway from MDS (child age 9 months) to child receptive vocabulary (4 ½ years) through both self-reported and observed parent-child verbal interactions (at both 2 and 4 ½ years). Participants (n = 4,432) were part of a large, diverse, contemporary pre-birth national cohort study: Growing Up in New Zealand. Results indicated a direct association between greater MDS at 9 months and poorer receptive vocabulary at age 4 ½ years. There was support for an indirect pathway through self-reported parent-child verbal interactions at 2 years and through observed parent-child verbal interactions at 4 ½ years. A moderated mediation effect was also found: the indirect effect of MDS on child vocabulary through observed verbal interaction was supported for families living in areas of greater socioeconomic deprivation. Overall, findings support the potential role of parent-child verbal interactions as a mechanism for the influence of MDS on later child language development. This pathway may be particularly important for families experiencing socioeconomic adversity, suggesting that effective and appropriate supportive parenting interventions be preferentially targeted to reduce inequities in child language outcomes.

Refugee children are often exposed to substantial trauma, placing them at increased risk for mental illness. However, this risk can be mitigated by a capacity for resilience, conferred from multiple ecological systems (e.g., family, community), including at an individual biological level. We examined the ability of hair cortisol concentrations and polygenic scores for mental health to predict risk and resilience in a sample of Syrian refugee children (n = 1359). Children were categorized as either at-risk or resilient depending on clinical thresholds for posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and externalizing behavior problems. Logistic regression was used to examine main and interacting effects while controlling for covariates. Elevated hair cortisol concentrations were significantly associated with reduced resilience (odds ratio (OR)=0.58, 95%CI [0.40, 0.83]) while controlling for levels of war exposure. Polygenic scores for depression, self-harm, and neuroticism were not found to have any significant main effects. However, a significant interaction emerged between hair cortisol and polygenic scores for depression (OR=0.04, 95%CI [0.003 0.47]), suggesting that children predisposed to depression were more at risk for mental health problems when hair cortisol concentrations were high. Our results suggest that biomarkers (separately and in combination) might support early identification of refugee children at risk for mental health problems.

Adolescents often experience heightened socioemotional sensitivity warranting their use of regulatory strategies. Yet, little is known about how key socializing agents help regulate teens’ negative emotions in daily life and implications for long-term adjustment. We examined adolescent girls’ interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) with parents and peers in response to negative social interactions, defined as parent and peer involvement in the teen’s enactment of emotion regulation strategies. We also tested associations between rates of daily parental and peer IER and depressive symptoms, concurrently and one year later. Adolescent girls (N = 112; Mage = 12.39) at temperamental risk for depressive disorders completed a 16-day ecological momentary assessment protocol measuring reactivity to negative social interactions, parental and peer IER, and current negative affect. Results indicated that adolescents used more adaptive strategies with peers and more maladaptive strategies with parents in daily life. Both parental and peer IER down-regulated negative affect, reflected by girls’ decreased likelihood of experiencing continued negative affect. Higher proportions of parental adaptive IER predicted reduced depressive symptoms one year later. Findings suggest that both parents and peers effectively help adolescent girls down-regulate everyday negative emotions; however, parents may offer more enduring benefits for long-term adjustment.