To what extent do social support and coping strategies mediate the relation between childhood maltreatment and major depressive disorder: A longitudinal community-based cohort

Li, Muzi; O’Donnell, Kieran J.; Caron, Jean; Meaney, Michael J.; Kobor, Michæl S.; D’Arcy, Carl; Su, Yingying; Liu, Aihua; Meng, Xiangyi

doi:10.1017/s0954579422000918

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 98 publications

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“…Critically, social support is a key protective factor against the emergence of mental health problems in young people with CA (Li et al, 2022 ; Trickey et al, 2012 ). However, little is known about the underlying mechanisms of this relationship.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The stress-buffering role of friendships in young people with childhood threat experiences: a preliminary report

König,

Berhe,

Ioannidis

et al. 2023

European Journal of Psychotraumatology

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Background: High-quality friendships have a positive impact on the mental health of young people with childhood adversity (CA). Social stress buffering, the phenomenon of a social partner attenuating acute stress responses, is a potential yet unexplored mechanism that may underlie this relationship. Objective: This study examined whether perceived friendship quality was related to better mental health and lower neural stress response in young people with CA. Method: A total of N = 102 young people (aged 16–26) with low to moderate CA were included in the study. We first investigated associations between friendship quality, mental health, and CA. In a representative subset ( n = 62), we assessed neural stress responses using the Montreal Imaging Stress Task. In our sample, CA was best described along two dimensions resembling threat or deprivation like experiences. Hence, we investigated both cumulative and dimensional effects of CA. Results: We found no support for social thinning after CA, meaning that the severity of CA (cumulative or dimensional) did not differentially impact friendship quality. High-quality friendships, on the other hand, were strongly associated with better mental health. Furthermore, acute stress increased state anxiety and enhanced neural activity in five frontolimbic brain regions, including the left hippocampus. We found weak support that threat experiences interacted with friendship quality to predict left hippocampal reactivity to stress. However, this effect did not survive multiple comparison correction. Conclusion: The absence of social thinning in our sample may suggest that the risk of developing impoverished social networks is low for rather well-functioning young people with low to moderate CA. Regardless, our findings align with prior research, consistently showing a strong association between high-quality friendships and better mental health in young people with CA. Future research is needed to examine whether friendships aid neural stress responses in young people with childhood threat experiences.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The stress-buffering role of friendships in young people with childhood threat experiences: a preliminary report

König,

Berhe,

Ioannidis

et al. 2023

European Journal of Psychotraumatology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Critically, social support is a key protective factor against the emergence of mental health problems in young people with CA (Li et al, 2022;Trickey et al, 2012). However, little is known about the underlying mechanisms of this relationship.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The stress-buffering role of friendships in young people with childhood threat experiences: a preliminary report

König,

Berhe,

Ioannidis

et al. 2023

Preprint

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High-quality friendships improve mental health in young people with childhood adversity (CA). Social stress buffering, the phenomenon of a social partner attenuating acute stress responses, may be one mechanism underlying this relationship. We examined whether perceived friendship quality was related to improved mental health and well-being (N = 102) and lower neural stress responses using the Montreal Imaging Stress Task (n = 62) in young people (aged 16-26) with mild to moderate CA. A principal component analysis revealed two dimensions of CA resembling threat or deprivation like experiences. Hence, we investigated both cumulative and dimension specific effects of CA. First, we found that higher friendship quality was associated with improved mental health and well-being, but not that CA (neither cumulative nor dimensional) was related to friendship quality. Furthermore, acute stress increased state anxiety and enhanced neural activity in five frontolimbic brain regions, including the left hippocampus. Preliminarily, we found that threat experiences interacted with friendship quality to predict left hippocampal reactivity to acute stress. However, this effect did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. Therefore, future research is needed to examine the role friendships play in aiding neural responses to acute stress in young people with childhood threat experiences.

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Stress and emotion recognition predict the relationship between a history of maltreatment and sensitive parenting behaviors: A moderated-moderation

Bérubé,

Pearson,

Blais

et al. 2024

Dev Psychopathol

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Our study proposes to examine how stress and emotion recognition interact with a history of maltreatment to influence sensitive parenting behaviors. A sample of 58 mothers and their children aged between 2 and 5 years old were recruited. Parents’ history of maltreatment was measured using the Child Trauma Questionnaire. An emotion recognition task was performed. Mothers identified the dominant emotion in morphed facial emotion expressions in children. Mothers and children interacted for 15 minutes. Salivary cortisol levels of mothers were collected before and after the interaction. Maternal sensitive behaviors were coded during the interaction using the Coding Interactive Behavior scheme. Results indicate that the severity of childhood maltreatment is related to less sensitive behaviors for mothers with average to good abilities in emotion recognition and lower to average increases in cortisol levels following an interaction with their children. For mothers with higher cortisol levels, there is no association between a history of maltreatment and sensitive behaviors, indicating that higher stress reactivity could act as a protective factor. Our study highlights the complex interaction between individual characteristics and environmental factors when it comes to parenting. These results argue for targeted interventions that address personal trauma.

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To what extent do social support and coping strategies mediate the relation between childhood maltreatment and major depressive disorder: A longitudinal community-based cohort

Cited by 4 publications

References 98 publications

The stress-buffering role of friendships in young people with childhood threat experiences: a preliminary report

The stress-buffering role of friendships in young people with childhood threat experiences: a preliminary report

The stress-buffering role of friendships in young people with childhood threat experiences: a preliminary report

Stress and emotion recognition predict the relationship between a history of maltreatment and sensitive parenting behaviors: A moderated-moderation

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