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Background: We are facing an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is causing detrimental effects on mental health, including disturbing consequences on child maltreatment and intimate partner violence., Methods: We sought to identify predictors of child maltreatment and intimate partner violence from 380 participants (mean age 36.67 ± 10.61, 63.2% male; Time 3: June 2020) using modern machine learning analysis (random forest and SHAP values). We predicted that COVID-related factors (such as days in lockdown), parents' psychological distress during the pandemic (anxiety, depression), their personality traits, and their intimate partner relationship will be key contributors to child maltreatment. We also examined if there is an increase in family violence during the pandemic by using an additional cohort at two time points (Time 1: March 2020, N = 434; mean age 35.67 ± 9.85, 41.69% male; and Time 2: April 2020, N = 515; mean age 35.3 ± 9.5, 34.33%)., Results: Feature importance analysis revealed that parents' affective empathy, psychological well-being, outdoor activities with children as well as a reduction in physical fights between partners are strong predictors of a reduced risk of child maltreatment. We also found a significant increase in physical punishment (Time 3: 66.26%) toward children, as well as in physical (Time 3: 36.24%) and verbal fights (Time 3: 41.08%) among partners between different times., Conclusion: Using modernized predictive algorithms, we present a spectrum of features that can have influential weight on prediction of child maltreatment. Increasing awareness about family violence consequences and promoting parenting programs centered around mental health are imperative., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Todorovic, O’Leary, Ward, Devarasetty, Lee, Knox and Andari.)

The current study aims to explore the functional changes of the amygdala in patients with euthymic Bipolar Disorder (BD) using resting state fMRI (rs-fMRI). Twenty-one euthymic patients with bipolar disorder and 28 healthy controls participated in this study. Two of the euthymic patients with BD and three of the healthy controls were excluded due to excessive head motion. We found that patients with euthymia (38.79 ± 12.03) show higher fALFF (fractional Amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation) value of the amygdala ( t = 2.076, P = 0.044), and lower functional connectivity between the amygdala and supplementary motor area ( p < 0.01, GRF corrected) than healthy controls (33.40 ± 8.21). However, euthymic patients did not show a differential activity in ReHo (Regional Homogeneity) and gray matter of the amygdala region as compared to healthy controls. Thus, despite the absence of clinical symptoms in euthymic patients with BD, the amygdala functional activity and its connectivity to other brain regions remain altered. Further investigation of negative emotions and social functioning in euthymic patients with BD are needed and can help pave the way for a better understanding of BD psychopathology.