The current study examines longitudinal associations between light and heavy sexual experiences and psychiatric symptoms in African American adolescent girls receiving mental health care. Research supports bidirectional associations between adolescent romantic and sexual behaviors and depression and other mental health problems, but this finding has not been examined among African American yout...

OBJECTIVE This study assessed the mediating role of trauma symptoms in the relation between child maltreatment and behavioral problems. It is based on the postulate that child maltreatment is a severe form of chronic relational trauma that has damaging consequences on the development of children's behavioral regulation. METHOD Participants were 34 maltreated and 64 non-maltreated children (me...

BACKGROUND Dysfunctional trauma-related cognitions correlate highly with chronic stress. Studies on maltreatment-related cognitions and their predictors in children and adolescents are rare. METHODS The study sample consisted of 231 children aged 8-17 years who had experienced maltreatment including domestic violence, emotional abuse, neglect, physical, and sexual abuse. Using multiple linear...

Etiological investigations of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and disruptive behavior problems support multiple causal pathways, including involvement of pre- and perinatal risk factors. Because these risks occur early in life, well before observable ADHD and externalizing symptoms emerge, the relation between risk and symptoms may be mediated by neurodevelopmental effects that ...

The high degree of comorbidity among mental disorders has generated interest in identifying transdiagnostic processes associated with multiple types of psychopathology. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema conceptualized rumination as one such transdiagnostic process associated with depression, anxiety, substance abuse, binge eating, and self-injurious behavior. The degree to which rumination accounts for the ...

The objective of the present study was to examine gender differences in the influence of paternal alcoholism on children's social-emotional development and to determine whether paternal alcoholism is associated with a greater number of externalizing symptoms in the male offspring. From the Mannheim Study of Risk Children, an ongoing longitudinal study of a high-risk population, the developmenta...

INTRODUCTION Our goal was to evaluate the impact of depressed mothers' marital intimacy and attachment security in romantic relationships on children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms. METHOD Forty-six clinically depressed mothers rated attachment security, marital intimacy, and symptoms shown by their children aged 8 to 12. RESULTS Maternal avoidance of closeness predicted increas...

This study examined the unique longitudinal effects linking academic competence, social competence, and internalizing symptoms from childhood to adulthood. A multimethod and multi-informant approach was used to assess psychopathology and competence in 205 participants during four developmental periods. Social competence in childhood had a cascading effect on internalizing symptoms in adolescenc...

This study aimed to investigate whether behavioural or emotional problems in adolescents detected by their teachers are signs of a common psychosocial maladjustment and of the beginning of social marginalization. Altogether, 171 pupils (15 years of age) from the eastern part of Finland participated in the survey. Behavioural and emotional problems and academic achievements were assessed separat...

Parental depression is a significant risk factor for adolescents' engagement in risk taking. Yet the neural processes that mediate the link between parental depression and adolescents' functioning remain unknown. Using a longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging design, we investigated how parental depression is associated with changes in adolescents' neural reactivity to rewards durin...