The assessment of variations in maternal behavior in laboratory rodents is challenging yet may provide an essential tool for understanding the mechanisms linking early life experiences to individual differences in stress responsivity and behavioral indices of depression and anxiety. In this chapter, the methodology for characterizing the quality and quantity of mother–pup interactions in mice a...

BACKGROUND Specific thematic content arising from children’s doll play is often considered to give clinically meaningful information regarding their mental state, but has received little systematic enquiry. This exploratory study examined the negative and atypical content themes in the attachment story narratives of children with behaviour problems, and their associations with child symptomatol...

Prior research has shown that parenting stress levels can be quite high among families of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study investigated the degree to which such stress was related not only to the child's ADHD, but also to various other child, parent, and family-environment circumstances. Multimethod assessments were conducted on 104 clinic-referred child...

OBJECTIVE To compare risk factors of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to age/sex-matched controls with particular attention to family history, parental age and nutrition. METHOD 31 ASD and 81 ADHD patients were compared to 612 age/sex-matched controls by reviewing charts for parental age, sibling order, gestational age, and early feeding, and ...

Despite evidence that children of male war veterans with combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are at particularly high risk for behavior problems, very little is currently known about suicidal behaviors in this population of youth. This study aimed to examine the prevalence and psychosocial correlates of suicide attempts among psychiatrically hospitalized adolescent offspring of ...

Infant sleep undergoes dramatic evolution during the first year of life. This process is driven by underlying biological forces but is highly dependent on environmental cues including parental influences. In this review the links between infant sleep and parental behaviors, cognitions, emotions and relationships as well as psychopathology are examined within the context of a transactional model...

The purpose of this review is to summarize studies that have examined associations between maternal adiposity prior to and during pregnancy and cognitive and psychiatric problems in offspring. Of the 11 studies published since a 2011 systematic review, four examined cognitive outcomes alone, four assessed psychopathology exclusively, and three reported on both cognitive and psychiatric endpoint...

Background Maternal psychopathology during pregnancy is associated with negative outcomes in offspring. Increased placental transfer of maternal cortisol may contribute to mediate this association. Hair concentrations (HCCs) appear be a good biomarker long-term prenatal stress exposure. Little known about the associations between severe and perinatal infant HCCs. Aims We assessed HCCs period mo...

Recent studies have shown associations between maternal psychopathology and inhibited behaviors in infants. Moreover, physiological factors have been identified as affecting the continuity of behavioral inhibition across childhood. The purpose of the present study was to examine electroencephalogram (EEG) activity and inhibited behavior in 12-month-old infants of depressed versus non-depressed ...

PURPOSE: Early psychiatric disorders represent one potential, yet underexplored mechanism that may explain the link between social adversity and physical health problems throughout childhood. The purpose of the present report was to describe the longitudinal trajectories of physical health beginning during preschool and continuing into adolescence and explore whether social adversity, family in...