Changes in adolescents’ motivations and capabilities pose unique challenges to parents who play a continuing role in ensuring the youth’s safety and well-being. We describe sensitively attuned parenting as an optimal response to this challenge and summarize practices of positive engagement, supervision/guidance and open communication that support sensitive attunement and facilitate the continuing development of the adolescent’s self-confidence, autonomous decision-making, and communication skills. We then consider factors that require parents to adapt their practices to the particular needs and developmental level of the adolescent. Individual differences that may challenge parent’s effectiveness in implementing these practices include: biological vulnerabilities, differential sensitivity to parenting, relationship history and temperament. Clinical interventions that seek to improve parenting offer an opportunity to test sensitive attunement as a mechanism for reducing adolescents’ symptoms and problem behaviors.
The Goal-corrected Partnership Adolescent Coding System (GPACS) has shown promise in assessing a secure as well as three atypical patterns of parent-adolescent interaction during a conflict discussion. The current study of 186 economically disadvantaged families examines the degree to which four GPACS patterns: Secure/Collaborative, Punitive, Role Confused and Disoriented—account for residual change in adolescents’ social competence and maladaptive behavior (internalizing, externalizing, and risk behaviors) between ages 13 to 15. Adolescents from Secure/Collaborative dyads at age 13 were more likely to have a secure state of mind in the AAI at age 15 and showed increases in teachers’ ratings of empathy and decreases in teachers’ ratings of externalizing behaviors between ages 13 and 15. Adolescents in Disoriented dyads showed a dramatic increase in teacher-rated internalizing problems, while male adolescents in Role Confused dyads reported increased involvement in risk behaviors including unprotected sexual activity and substance use problems.
Impulsive personality traits are often predictive of risky behavior, but not much is known about the neurobiological basis of this relationship. We investigated whether thickness of the cortical mantle varied as a function of impulsive traits and whether such variation also explained recent risky behavior. A community sample of 107 adults (ages 18-55; 54.2% men) completed self-report measures of impulsive traits and risky behavior followed by a neuroimaging protocol. Using the three-factor model of impulsive traits derived from the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale, analysis of the entire cortical mantle identified three thickness clusters that related to impulsive traits. Sensation seeking was negatively related to thickness in the right pericalcarine cortex, whereas impulsive urgency was positively associated with thickness in the left superior parietal and right paracentral lobule. Notably, follow-up analyses showed that thickness in the right pericalcarine cortex also related to recent risky behavior, with the identified cluster mediating the association between sensation seeking and risky behavior. Findings suggest that reduced thickness in the pericalcarine region partially explains the link between sensation seeking and the tendency to engage in risky behavior, providing new insight into the neurobiological basis of these relationships.
Objective: Although there are currently several efficacious treatments for depressed and suicidal adolescents, less is known about predictors and moderators of adolescents' treatment response. A growing literature has identified family functioning as a prognostic indicator of adolescents' likelihood of benefiting from treatment. The current study tested both observational and perceived measures of family functioning as indicators of adolescents' response to 2 treatment conditions. Method: The sample consisted of 129 depressed and suicidal adolescents (M age ϭ 14.96, 82.9% female, 56% Black/African American) who were randomized to attachment-based family therapy or family-enhanced nondirective supportive therapy (Diamond et al., 2019). Baseline assessments of family functioning included ratings of parent-adolescent communication coded with the Goal-Corrected Partnership in Adolescence Coding System (Lyons-Ruth, Hennighausen, & Holmes, 2005) and adolescent and parent reports of Family Conflict and Cohesion from the Self-Report of Family Functioning (Bloom, 1985). Results: Adolescents who engaged in more uncooperative communication with their parents during a 10-min conflict discussion showed greater reductions in depressive symptoms in both treatments. Adolescents from traditionally underserved (non-White or lower income) families showed greater reductions in suicidal ideation in both treatments. Conclusions: Attachment-based family therapy and family-enhanced nondirective supportive therapy were most effective for adolescents from traditionally underserved families and adolescents who engaged in less cooperative communication with their caregivers. Observational ratings of parent-adolescent communication were better prognostic indicators of treatment response than were self-reported indicators of global family functioning. Implications for generalizing these results to other treatments for depressed and suicidal adolescents are discussed. What is the public health significance of this article?Identification of factors that predict treatment response for depressed and suicidal adolescents holds important implications for treatment planning. The current study extends prior literature by testing multiple measures of family functioning as well as demographic factors as predictors and moderators of depressed and suicidal adolescents' response to attachment-based family therapy (ABFT) and This article was published Online First October 24, 2019.
The present study was aimed at detecting the phytochemicals and evaluating the antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of Euphorbia resinifera known for their medicinal properties in folk medicine. Phytochemical screening was carried out on the aerial part of Euphorbia resinifera. The assessment of antifungal activity was performed in terms of percentage of radial growth on solid medium (potatoes dextrose agar PDA) against Aspergillus flavus and Penicillium expansum. The antibacterial effect was studied by the agar direct contact method using Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli strains. Then, the antioxidant evaluation of the extracts of alkaloids, flavonoids and methanolic extract was performed by DPPH • free radical scavenging and high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) techniques. The phytochemical estimation revealed the presence of alkaloids, flavonoids and saponosides. These phytochemicals were isolated from the plant with yields of 0.7 %, 0.4 % and 0.35 %. HPTLC screening provided qualitatively the antioxidant effect of extracts under study. Furthermore, it was found that the methanolic, flavonoids and alkaloids extracts had a potent DPPH scavenging potency with IC50 values of 0.0086; 0.378 and 1.171 mg/mL, respectively. Finally, the results of antimicrobial activity of the aqueous extract showed a pronounced antifungal activity against the tested strains. The percentage inhibition values were found to be in the range of 64.14 to 85.51 % against Aspergillus flavus and 60.33 to 92.28 % against Penicillium expansum. In contrast, the same extract inhibited only the growth of Escherichia coli bacteria. Further study is recommended to isolate and elucidate the active compounds and to evaluate in vivo their antioxidant and antimicrobial effect.
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