Psychological, autonomic, and serotonergic correlates of parasuicide among adolescent girls

Abstract

Although parasuicidal behavior in adolescence is poorly understood, evidence suggests that it may be a developmental precursor of borderline personality disorder~BPD!. Current theories of both parasuicide and BPD suggest that emotion dysregulation is the primary precipitant of self-injury, which serves to dampen overwhelmingly negative affect. To date, however, no studies have assessed endophenotypic markers of emotional responding among parasuicidal adolescents. In the present study, we compare parasuicidal adolescent girls~n ϭ 23! with age-matched controls~n ϭ 23! on both psychological and physiological measures of emotion regulation and psychopathology. Adolescents, parents, and teachers completed questionnaires assessing internalizing and externalizing psychopathology, substance use, trait affectivity, and histories of parasuicide. Psychophysiological measures including electrodermal responding~EDR!, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and cardiac pre-ejection period~PEP! were collected at baseline, during negative mood induction, and during recovery. Compared with controls, parasuicidal adolescents exhibited reduced respiratory sinus arrhythmia~RSA! at baseline, greater RSA reactivity during negative mood induction, and attenuated peripheral serotonin levels. No between-group differences on measures of PEP or EDR were found. These results lend further support to theories of emotion dysregulation and impulsivity in parasuicidal teenage girls.

Dissociation of sad facial expressions and autonomic nervous system responding in boys with disruptive behavior disorders

“…In the present context, it is possible that sadness cues are not eliciting active avoidance motivations among children with DBDs. Again, this conjecture is speculative and requires further study.Prediction of internalizing symptoms by deficits in response coherence between facial sadness and RSA is consistent with a growing literature linking vagal deficiencies to depressive, anxious, and self-injurious behaviors (e.g., Crowell et al 2005;Rottenberg, Salomon, Gross, & Gotlib, 2005;Thayer, Friedman, & Borkovec, 1996). Yet reduced RSA is also observed consistently among externalizing children and adolescents (Beauchaine et al, , 2007Mezzacappa et al, 1997).…”

“…However, several previous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of the The Champ in evoking state sadness (Crowell et al, 2005;Goldin et al, 2005;Gross & Levenson, 1995;Hewig et al, 2005;Hutcherson et al, 2005). Furthermore, even though group differences in facial expressions and autonomic reactivity were not observed during the film, both groups demonstrated increased …”

“…Then, following a 5-min baseline, participants underwent the sad emotion induction procedure. 1 This involved watching a 3-min scene from The Champ, a film that has been used extensively in prior research to elicit emotional sadness, as indicated by subjective, behavioral, physiological, and neural responses among both adolescents and adults (e.g., Crowell et al, 2005;Goldin et al, 2005;Gross & Levenson, 1995; Hewig etal., 2005;Hutcherson, Goldin, Ochsner, Gabrieli, & Gross, 2005). The film shows a young boy responding to the death of his father.…”

Future Directions in Emotion Dysregulation and Youth Psychopathology

“…withdrawal to emotion evocation correlate with symptoms of both internalizing and externalizing psychopathology (see Beauchaine, 2001Beauchaine, , 2012Porges, 2007;Vasilev, Crowell, Beauchaine, Mead, & GatzkeKopp, 2009), and with a wide range of psychopathological outcomes, including anxiety (e.g., Hastings et al, 2008;Kemp et al, 2014;Thayer, Friedman, & Borkovec, 1996), phobias (e.g., Å hs, Sollers, Furmark, Fredrikson, & Thayer, 2009), attention problems (see Rash & Aguirre-Camacho, 2012), autism (Neuhaus, Bernier, & Beauchaine, 2014;Patriquin, Scarpa, Friedman, & Porges, 2013), callousness (de Wied, van Boxtel, Matthys, & Meeus, 2012), conduct disorder Beauchaine, Katkin, Strassberg, & Snarr, 2001), depression (e.g., Rottenberg, 2007;Rottenberg, Salomon, Gross, & Gotlib, 2005;Rottenberg, Wilhelm, Gross, & Gotlib, 2002), nonsuicidal self-injury (Crowell et al, 2005), panic disorder (e.g., Asmundson & Stein, 1994), trait hostility (Sloan et al, 1994), psychopathy (Hansen, Johnsen, Thornton, Waage, & Thayer, 2007), and schizophrenia (Clamor, Lincoln, Thayer, & Koenig, in press). 5 Moreover, comorbid internalizing and externalizing symptoms predict greater RSA withdrawal to emotion evocation than either internalizing or externalizing symptoms alone (Calkins, Graziano, & Keane, 2007;Pang & Beauchaine, 2013).…”

Parent-child interactions, peripheral serotonin, and self-inflicted injury in adolescents.

“…The invitation included a $25 monetary incentive. The study was approved by the Seattle Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center Institutional Review Board, and all participants and their mothers provided written informed assent and consent, respectively.The sample described herein includes a different but overlapping set of the participants described by Crowell et al (2005). This is because some participants declined further participation in the discussion task, which has not been reported previously, and because the present sample includes 4 male participants (2 in each group) who were excluded from previous analyses.…”