Relations Among Father's Presence, Family Conflict, and Adolescent Adjustment in Northern Ireland.

Burgeoning evidence identifies the influence of fathers and, relatedly, fathers in the family context (e.g., family conflict), on adolescent adjustment. However, little is known about the significance of fathers' presence in contexts of environmental risk. In a unique social-political context of economic and sociopolitical adversity, this study examined relations between adolescent adjustment, fathers' presence, and family conflict in families in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Based on responses from 999 adolescents (M = 12.18 years; SD = 1.82) and their mothers, participating from 2006 to 2012, fathers' presence was linked with reduced internalizing symptoms, and family conflict was related to both internalizing and externalizing problems. The discussion considers the implications for understanding family dynamics related to adolescent adjustment in contexts of environmental adversity.

Sex-specific impairment of spatial memory in rats following a reminder of predator stress.

It has been suggested that cognitive impairments exhibited by people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) result from intrusive, flashback memories transiently interfering with ongoing cognitive processing. Researchers have further speculated that females are more susceptible to developing PTSD because they form stronger traumatic memories than males, hence females may be more sensitive to the negative effects of intrusive memories on cognition. We have examined how the reminder of a naturalistic stress experience would affect rat spatial memory and if sex was a contributing factor to such effects. Male and female Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed, without contact, to an adult female cat for 30 min. Five weeks later, the rats were trained to locate a hidden platform in the radial-arm water maze and given a single long-term memory test trial 24 h later. Before long-term memory testing, the rats were given a 30-min reminder of the cat exposure experienced 5 weeks earlier. The results indicated that the stress reminder impaired spatial memory in the female rats only. Control manipulations revealed that this effect was not attributable to the original cat exposure adversely impacting learning that occurred 5 weeks later, or to merely exposing rats to a novel environment or predator-related cues immediately before testing. These findings provide evidence that the reminder of a naturalistic stressful experience can impair cognitive processing in rats; moreover, since female rats were more susceptible to the memory-impairing effects of the stress reminder, the findings could lend insight into the existing sex differences in susceptibility to PTSD.

A Developmental Psychopathology Perspective on Political Violence and Youth Adjustment.

According to the United Nations (2021), [...].

Evaluating the Role of Maternal and Paternal Trauma Exposure, Emotional Security, and Mental Health in Predicting Psychological Adjustment among Palestinian Adolescents.

Previous research has established a strong relationship between family system functioning and child adjustment outcomes. However, within the context of Gaza, an evaluation of both maternal and paternal factors associated with adolescent psychological adjustment has not yet been thoroughly evaluated. The current study examines how maternal and paternal trauma exposure, emotional security, and mental health are related to parent-reported scores of adolescent psychological adjustment, while controlling for adolescent trauma exposure and security in the family. The sample included N = 68 family units living in the Gaza Strip, with two parents and one adolescent surveyed within each unit (adolescent Mage = 14.03 years). The regression model examining maternal factors was significant overall (F = 7.44, R2 = 42.70%, p < 0.001), with increased maternal depression associated with greater adolescent adjustment difficulties (ß = 0.31, p = 0.011) and greater maternal emotional security in the family associated with fewer adolescent adjustment difficulties (ß = −0.36, p = 0.004). The regression model examining paternal factors was also significant (F = 4.57, R2 = 31.00%, p < 0.001), with increased paternal trauma exposure associated with greater adolescent adjustment difficulties (ß = 0.32, p = 0.012). Understanding family-level factors associated with adolescent adjustment is an important step in conceptualizing the mental health needs of conflict-affected youth within the context of Gaza and more broadly.

Bidirectional effects between maternal mental health and adolescent internalizing problems across six years in Northern Ireland.

Background: Emerging evidence indicates the existence of bidirectional relations between mothers' mental health and adolescent adjustment, but few studies have examined these relations in contexts of high environmental adversity, including economic deprivation and political violence. Given other empirical connections between political violence and adolescent adjustment problems, the impact of child adjustment problems on maternal mental health may be exacerbated in contexts of sectarian violence. Methods: Addressing this gap, latent change score modeling was used to examine interrelations between trajectories of maternal mental health and adolescent internalizing symptoms over time in communities afflicted by political conflict. Over six years, 999 adolescent-mother dyads participated in a longitudinal study in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Six-hundred ninety-five families were originally recruited in year 1, with 304 recruited to supplement the sample in year 3; the largest available sample for a given year was 760 dyads. Models including maternal mental health, adolescent internalizing symptomatology, and political violence (i.e., sectarian antisocial behavior) as a time-varying covariate were tested. Results: Results demonstrated that for both mothers and adolescents in a dyadic pairing, higher rates of symptomology in one member of the dyad were related to symptoms observed in the other member. Results also suggest that political violence and factors related to social deprivation increased symptoms across the dyad. Conclusion: This study advances understanding of the bidirectional impact between maternal mental health and adolescent internalizing over time in contexts of political violence.