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Social Science & Medicine (1982) Jan 2022There is increasing interest in the role of contextual factors in promoting well-being among parents of children with developmental disabilities. This study aimed to...
OBJECTIVE
There is increasing interest in the role of contextual factors in promoting well-being among parents of children with developmental disabilities. This study aimed to examine whether social network types moderate the impacts of having a child with a developmental disability on parents' health.
METHODS
Using cross-sectional data from the Midlife in the United States survey (MIDUS 2 and Refresher cohorts), we analyzed a sample of 363 parents of children with developmental disabilities and 4,919 parents of children without developmental disabilities. K-means cluster analysis was implemented to identify a social network typology. Modified Poisson and negative binomial regression models estimated the effect of having a child with a developmental disability and the typology on parents' physical health (self-rated health, number of chronic conditions) and mental health (self-rated mental health, major depression).
RESULTS
The cluster analysis revealed two social network types. Parents of children with developmental disabilities were more likely to have "restricted/unsupported" networks, whereas parents in the comparison group were more likely to have "diverse/supported" networks. Social support was more important for differentiating the network types of parents of children with developmental disabilities, while social integration was more salient for the comparison group. Parents of children with developmental disabilities fared worse on all outcomes relative to parents of children without disabilities. However, the typology had a compensatory psychological effect; the diverse/supported network type conferred greater mental health benefits to parents of children with developmental disabilities than to those in the comparison group. The diverse/supported network type was also associated with better physical health, but the associations did not differ between the two parent groups.
CONCLUSIONS
The results of this study emphasize the importance of social determinants of well-being for those with exceptional parenting responsibilities. Strengthening social networks may have a particularly positive impact on such parents' mental health.
Topics: Adult; Child; Cross-Sectional Studies; Developmental Disabilities; Humans; Parenting; Parents; Social Networking; United States
PubMed: 34891030
DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114623 -
American Journal of Preventive Medicine Dec 2017This study examined how mothers' Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) relate to their children's developmental risk and assessed how the association is mediated through...
INTRODUCTION
This study examined how mothers' Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) relate to their children's developmental risk and assessed how the association is mediated through mothers' depressive symptoms and fair/poor health.
METHODS
Mothers of children aged between 4 months and 4 years were recruited from the emergency department of a children's hospital between March 2012 and June 2015 and interviewed about ACEs, mothers' depressive symptoms and health status, and children's developmental risk (screened via Parents' Evaluations of Developmental Status [PEDS]). Between August and November 2016 a Cochran-Armitage test assessed trend of PEDS by ACEs. Multinomial regression models examined differences in PEDS by ACEs severity. Mediation by mothers' depressive symptoms and self-rated health was also assessed.
RESULTS
Of 1,293 mothers, 56.7% reported one or more ACEs. Mothers also reported developmental risk (20.4% overall): 120 (9.2%) reported one concern and 144 (11.2%) reported two or more concerns on the PEDS. Mothers who reported household substance use, mental illness, or an incarcerated household member during childhood were more likely to report at least one child developmental concern on the PEDS. After controlling for covariates, odds of one PEDS concern were 1.86 (95% CI=1.16, 3.00) for ACEs, one to three versus none, and 2.21 (95% CI=1.26, 3.87) for ACEs four or more versus none. Adjusted odds of two or more concerns were 1.70 (95% CI=1.07, 2.72) for ACEs, one to three versus none, and 1.76 (95% CI=1.02, 3.05) for ACEs, four or more versus none. Mothers' depressive symptoms and self-rated health were potential mediators.
CONCLUSIONS
Mothers' ACEs are significantly associated with their children's developmental risk. If replicated, findings suggest that addressing intergenerational trauma through focus on childhood adversity among young children's caregivers may promote child development.
Topics: Adult; Child Development; Child, Preschool; Depression; Female; Health Status; Humans; Infant; Life Change Events; Mothers; Regression Analysis; Risk; Young Adult
PubMed: 28919342
DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2017.07.015 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2023Egyptian and Roma communities represent two of the most deprived and stigmatized ethnic minorities in Albania. However, research investigating vulnerability and...
Risk behaviors and well-being among Egyptian and Roma adolescents in Albania during the COVID-19 pandemic: Vulnerability and resilience in a positive youth development perspective.
INTRODUCTION
Egyptian and Roma communities represent two of the most deprived and stigmatized ethnic minorities in Albania. However, research investigating vulnerability and well-being in youth from these communities is scant. Even less is known among Egyptian and Roma adolescents who dropped-out of school. Within a Positive Youth Development framework, we investigated among Egyptian and Roma adolescents: (1) risk behaviors, well-being, and developmental assets (personal and contextual); (2) associations of developmental assets with risk behaviors and well-being; (3) specificities by ethnicity, gender, and education.
METHODS
A total of 201 Egyptian and Roma adolescents ( = 16.63, = 1.80; 47% girls; 53% school dropouts) completed a series of questionnaires in a community setting in August 2020 (first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic).
RESULTS
Binomial, Poisson and linear regression models indicated that Egyptian and Roma adolescents reported similar and high levels of risk behaviors, with boys reporting overall more risk behaviors than girls. Low level of well-being and of personal and contextual assets were reported. Girls reported higher family assets, positive values and social competencies than boys. The situation of adolescents attending school was overall not better than that of youth who had dropped out. Higher positive identity was associated with higher well-being.
DISCUSSION
Intervention and prevention efforts are urgently needed to support minority adolescents' development during and in the aftermath of the pandemic. They should address the structural factors which limit the availability of personal and contextual resources in minority youth's lives. Interventions aimed at building safer neighborhoods and providing safe access to schools for minority youth should be a priority and are essential to prevent the widening of inequalities during and after this health emergency.
PubMed: 37599737
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.989661 -
Frontiers in Psychiatry 2023To advance our understanding of adolescents' identity formation and how it may play into their psychological functioning, this study investigated developmental...
Trajectories of adaptive and disturbed identity dimensions in adolescence: developmental associations with self-esteem, resilience, symptoms of depression, and borderline personality disorder features.
To advance our understanding of adolescents' identity formation and how it may play into their psychological functioning, this study investigated developmental trajectory classes of adaptive and disturbed dimensions of identity formation, and whether adolescents belonging to different trajectory classes develop differently on self-esteem, resilience, symptoms of depression, and borderline personality disorder (BPD) features. Three-wave longitudinal data from 2,123 Flemish adolescents was used (54.2% girls; = 14.64, range = 12-18 at T1). Results pointed to four trajectory classes of identity formation: adaptive identity, identity progression, identity regression, and diffused identity. The adaptive identity class presented with stable high levels of self-esteem and resilience, and stable low levels of symptoms of depression and BPD, whereas opposite results were obtained for the diffused identity class. The identity progression class reported an increase in self-esteem and resilience as well as a decrease in symptoms of depression and BPD, whereas opposite results were obtained for the identity regression class. These results emphasize that adaptive and disturbed dimensions of identity formation are closely related to markers of well-being and psychopathology among adolescents, and could help identify adolescents with an increased risk for negative psychological functioning or increased opportunity for positive psychological functioning.
PubMed: 37168080
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1125812 -
BioRxiv : the Preprint Server For... Sep 2023Healthy sleep is important for adolescent neurodevelopment, and relationships between brain structure and sleep can vary in strength over this maturational window....
STUDY OBJECTIVES
Healthy sleep is important for adolescent neurodevelopment, and relationships between brain structure and sleep can vary in strength over this maturational window. Although cortical gyrification is increasingly considered a useful index for understanding cognitive and emotional outcomes in adolescence, and sleep is also a strong predictor of such outcomes, we know relatively little about associations between cortical gyrification and sleep.
METHODS
Using Local gyrification index (lGI) of 34 bilateral brain regions and regularized regression for feature selection, we examined gyrification-sleep relationships in the Neuroimaging and Pediatric Sleep databank (252 participants; 9-26 years; 58.3% female) and identified developmentally invariant (stable across age) or developmentally specific (observed only during discrete age intervals) brain-sleep associations. Naturalistic sleep characteristics (duration, timing, continuity, and regularity) were estimated from wrist actigraphy.
RESULTS
For most brain regions, greater lGI was associated with longer sleep duration, earlier sleep timing, lower variability in sleep regularity, and shorter time awake after sleep onset. lGI in frontoparietal network regions showed associations with sleep patterns that were stable across age. However, in default mode network regions, lGI was only associated with sleep patterns from late childhood through early-to-mid adolescence, a period of vulnerability for mental health disorders.
CONCLUSIONS
We detected both developmentally invariant and developmentally specific ties between local gyrification and naturalistic sleep patterns. Default mode network regions may be particularly susceptible to interventions promoting more optimal sleep during childhood and adolescence.
PubMed: 37745609
DOI: 10.1101/2023.09.15.557966 -
Frontiers in Psychiatry 2021This study examined the presence of neurodevelopmental regression and its effects on the clinical manifestations and the severity of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in a...
This study examined the presence of neurodevelopmental regression and its effects on the clinical manifestations and the severity of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in a group of children with autism compared with those without neurodevelopmental regression at the time of initial classification and subsequently. ASD patients were classified into two subgroups, neurodevelopmental regressive (AMR) and non-regressive (ANMR), using a questionnaire based on the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised test. The severity of ASD and neurodevelopment were assessed with the , and (PDDBI) and with the Battelle Developmental Inventory tests at the beginning of the study and after 24 months of follow-up. Fifty-two patients aged 2-6 years with ASD were included. Nineteen were classified with AMR, and 33 were classified with ANMR. The AMR subgroup presented greater severity of autistic symptoms and higher autism scores. Additionally, they showed lower overall neurodevelopment. The AMR subgroup at 24 months had poorer scores on the Battelle Developmental Inventory test in the following areas: Total personal/social ( < 0.03), Total Motor ( < 0.04), Expressive ( < 0.01), and Battelle Total ( < 0.04). On the PDDBI test, the AMR subgroup had scores indicating significantly more severe ASD symptoms in the variables: ritual score ( < 0.038), social approach behaviors ( < 0.048), expressive language ( < 0.002), and autism score ( < 0.003). ASD patients exhibited a set of different neurological phenotypes. The AMR and ANMR subgroups presented different clinical manifestations and prognoses in terms of the severity of autistic symptoms and neurodevelopment.
PubMed: 33841211
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.644324 -
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Apr 2022Event-related potentials (ERPs) are advantageous for investigating cognitive development. However, their application in infants/children is challenging given children's... (Review)
Review
Event-related potentials (ERPs) are advantageous for investigating cognitive development. However, their application in infants/children is challenging given children's difficulty in sitting through the multiple trials required in an ERP task. Thus, a large problem in developmental ERP research is high subject exclusion due to too few analyzable trials. Common analytic approaches (that involve averaging trials within subjects and excluding subjects with too few trials, as in ANOVA and linear regression) work around this problem, but do not mitigate it. Moreover, these practices can lead to inaccuracies in measuring neural signals. The greater the subject exclusion, the more problematic inaccuracies can be. We review recent developmental ERP studies to illustrate the prevalence of these issues. Critically, we demonstrate an alternative approach to ERP analysis-linear mixed effects (LME) modeling-which offers unique utility in developmental ERP research. We demonstrate with simulated and real ERP data from preschool children that commonly employed ANOVAs yield biased results that become more biased as subject exclusion increases. In contrast, LME models yield accurate, unbiased results even when subjects have low trial-counts, and are better able to detect real condition differences. We include tutorials and example code to facilitate LME analyses in future ERP research.
Topics: Child, Preschool; Electroencephalography; Evoked Potentials; Humans; Linear Models
PubMed: 35395594
DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2022.101070 -
Psychological Medicine Apr 2023Cognitive and motor dysfunction are hallmark features of the psychosis continuum, and have been detected during late childhood and adolescence in youth who report...
BACKGROUND
Cognitive and motor dysfunction are hallmark features of the psychosis continuum, and have been detected during late childhood and adolescence in youth who report psychotic experiences (PE). However, previous investigations have not explored infancy and early childhood development. It remains unclear whether such deficits emerge much earlier in life, and whether they are associated with psychotic, specifically hallucinatory, experiences (HE).
METHODS
This study included data from Gen2 participants of The Raine Study ( = 1101), a population-based longitudinal cohort study in Western Australia. Five areas of childhood development comprising: communication; fine motor; gross motor; adaptive (problem-solving); and personal-social skills, were assessed serially at ages 1, 2 and 3 years. Information on HE, depression and anxiety at ages 10, 14 and 17 years was obtained. HE were further subdivided into those with transient or recurrent experiences. Mixed effects logistic regression models and cumulative risk analyses based on multiple domain delays were performed.
RESULTS
Early poorer development in multiple areas was noted from ages 1, 2 and 3 years among youth who reported HE. Early developmental delays significantly increased the risk for later HE. This association was particularly marked in the recurrent HE group, with over 40% having early developmental delays in multiple domains. There was no significant association between early childhood development and later anxiety/depression apart from lower gross motor scores at age 3.
CONCLUSIONS
The findings suggest that early pan-developmental deficits are associated with later HE, with the effect strongest for young people who report recurrent HE throughout childhood and adolescence.
Topics: Adolescent; Child; Humans; Child, Preschool; Infant; Cohort Studies; Longitudinal Studies; Psychotic Disorders; Hallucinations; Depression
PubMed: 34583789
DOI: 10.1017/S0033291721003883 -
Journal of Autism and Developmental... Jul 2008We studied seven children with CNS folate deficiency (CFD). All cases exhibited psychomotor retardation, regression, cognitive delay, and dyskinesia; six had seizures;...
We studied seven children with CNS folate deficiency (CFD). All cases exhibited psychomotor retardation, regression, cognitive delay, and dyskinesia; six had seizures; four demonstrated neurological abnormalities in the neonatal period. Two subjects had profound neurological abnormalities that precluded formal behavioral testing. Five subjects received ADOS and ADI-R testing and met diagnostic criteria for autism or autism spectrum disorders. They exhibited difficulties with transitions, insistence on sameness, unusual sensory interests, and repetitive behaviors. Those with the best language skills largely used repetitive phrases. No mutations were found in folate transporter or folate enzyme genes. These findings demonstrate that autistic features are salient in CFD and suggest that a subset of children with developmental regression, mental retardation, seizures, dyskinesia, and autism may have CNS folate abnormalities.
Topics: Adolescent; Autistic Disorder; Brain; Child; Child, Preschool; Developmental Disabilities; Dyskinesias; Epilepsy; Female; Folic Acid; Folic Acid Deficiency; Humans; Infant; Infant, Newborn; Intellectual Disability; Male; Pregnancy; Psychomotor Disorders; Reference Values; Regression, Psychology; Tetrahydrofolates
PubMed: 18027081
DOI: 10.1007/s10803-007-0492-z -
Journal of Adolescent and Young Adult... Apr 2023Adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer are in a unique situation due to their age and developmental stage in life and may have different symptoms and concerns...
Adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer are in a unique situation due to their age and developmental stage in life and may have different symptoms and concerns than older patients. Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROs) questionnaires, routinely used in Alberta, can help identify the distinct needs of AYAs. We aimed to compare PROs data for AYAs and older adults (OAs) to better understand how the concerns of AYAs differ, which is key to providing individualized care and creating targeted programming and system-level change. Retrospective data were collected for two patient cohorts who completed at least one PROs questionnaire between October 1, 2019 and April 1, 2020. The AYA cohort was aged 18-39, and the OA cohort was aged 40 and older. Symptoms were compared using mean scores and multiple linear regression, and concerns were compared using counts and multivariate negative binomial regression. AYAs had significantly higher mean scores on depression and anxiety, compared to OAs, and lower mean scores for most physical symptoms. They indicated significantly more concerns in the Emotional and Social/Family/Spiritual domains, and were over three times more likely to indicate Work/School as a concern. AYAs with cancer have distinct concerns that should be addressed to ensure comprehensive, quality cancer care for this population. PROs data are useful in identifying needs and facilitating evidence-based, data-driven change at all levels of the health care system.
Topics: Humans; Adolescent; Young Adult; Adult; Middle Aged; Aged; Cohort Studies; Retrospective Studies; Alberta; Emotions; Patient Reported Outcome Measures; Neoplasms
PubMed: 35749720
DOI: 10.1089/jayao.2021.0213