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Children with disorganized attachment are not a unified category. This study examined different signs of disorganization in school-age children's attachment narratives, whether the signs clustered into specific profiles of disorganization, and if the profiles were associated with children's continuous attachment ratings and mental health. Our binational sample of 8- to 12-year-old children (n = 33) had disorganization as their primary attachment classification. Attachment was measured with the Story Stem procedure and mental health symptoms were measured with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Fifteen different signs of disorganization were found that clustered into four unique profiles distinguished by chaotic-frightening, hostile-punitive, caregiving, and dissociative signs. Children with more punitive and frightening signs in their profiles displayed higher attachment disorganization and ambivalence, whereas caregiving and dissociative profiles were associated with attachment avoidance, and the dissociative profile also with more mental health symptoms. Subtypes of middle childhood disorganization need more research and are also important to recognize in clinical practice.

Family relationships habitually shape the way traumatic events affect children's mental health in a context of war and violence, but research is scarce on the role these relationships play in the success of psychosocial interventions. This study is a secondary analysis of previously identified family system types that are based on attachment, parenting, and siblingship, and of the influence they have on the effectiveness of teaching recovery techniques (TRT). TRT is a psychosocial group intervention aimed at reducing children's mental health problems and increasing their psychosocial resources. We tested three hypotheses. First was the compensation hypothesis, which holds that children from families with negative relationships benefit a great deal from the TRT intervention. The second was the accumulative hypothesis, which maintains that children from families with negative relationships do not benefit from the intervention. The third, the buffering hypothesis, states that children from families with positive relationships benefit a great deal from the intervention. The family sample consists of 325 Palestinian mothers and fathers and one of their children (age 10--13). Children participated either in the TRT intervention or waiting-list control groups. Their self-reported post-traumatic stress symptoms, emotional and conduct problems, positive resources, and prosocial behavior were assessed at baseline, three months post-intervention, and at a six-month follow-up. We found that family type was significantly associated with TRT effectiveness, which supports the compensation and buffering hypotheses. Children with insecure and negative family relationships and those from families with discrepant perceptions of relationship quality showed a decline in emotional problems across the three assessments, and an increase in positive resources. Children from families with highly secure, positive relationships and those with moderately secure, neutral relationships showed increased positive resources and prosocial behavior in the control group as well. We argue that a family system approach can deepen understanding of the mechanisms of successful psychosocial interventions and, therefore, that family relations should be taken into account when tailoring such interventions for traumatized children.

This prospective longitudinal study examined how maternal prenatal substance use disorder (SUD) and early mother-infant interaction quality are associated with child social cognition (emotion recognition and mentalization) at school age. A sample of 52 poly-substance-using mothers receiving early interventions and 50 non-users, along with their children, was followed from pregnancy to school age. First-year mother-infant interaction quality was measured with EA scales. At school age, child facial emotion recognition was measured with DANVA and mentalization with LEAS-C. SUD group children did not differ from comparison children in social cognition, but higher severity of maternal prenatal addiction predicted emotion recognition problems. High early mother-infant interaction quality predicted better emotion recognition and mentalization, and mother-infant interaction quality mediated the effect of prenatal SUD on emotion recognition. The results highlight the need for early treatments targeting both parenting and addiction, as well as long-term developmental support for these children.

Maternal singing is considered vital to infant well-being. This study focuses on vocal emotion expressions in infant-directed singing among mothers in war conditions. It examines the questions: (a) how traumatic war events and mental health problems are associated with the content and valence of vocal emotion expressions and (b) how these emotion expressions are associated with infant development. The vocal material consists of songs sung by 50 Palestinian mothers who participated at delivery (T1) as well as when their infants were 6 (T2) and 18 (T3) months of age. These mothers reported traumatic war events (T1); depressive and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms (T2-T3); and infants' emotional, sensorimotor, and cognitive development (T2-T3). Student judges evaluated the valence and content of vocal emotion expressions in maternal infant-directed singing (playfulness-vivacity, fear, joy, sadness, love-tenderness, anger, and tension). Severe traumatic war events and depressive symptoms were associated with low positive and high negative vocal emotion expressions. High levels of playfulness and joy, as well as low levels of fear and tension, were associated with infant positive affectivity, while low levels of fear, anger, and tension were associated with advanced infant language skills. Discussion focuses on the vocal markers of maternal mental health and infant development.

Background: The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) committed genocide of the Yazidis in Sinjar 2014, resulting in dispersion and enslavement. Research shows severe mental health problems, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among survivors, but less is known about their resources and strengths, conceptualized as posttraumatic growth (PTG). Aims: are to examine the balance between symptoms and strengths among Yazidi women caring for their infants by identifying groups differing in PTSD and PTG, and analyze how demographic, obstetric, and infant-related factors associate with the groups. Method: Participants were 283 Yazidi mothers with their 1-18-month-old infants displaced in Kurdish Region of North Iraq. PTSD symptoms were measured by Harvard Trauma Questionnaire and PTG by the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory. Results: identified four groups: "Severe symptoms and low growth" (39%), "Low symptoms and moderate growth" (38%), "Moderate symptoms and very high growth" (13%), and "Moderate symptoms and low growth" (10%). Low education, economic difficulties and obstetric problems related to the "Severe symptoms and low growth" group, whereas newborn and infant health problems did not have an impact. Conclusion: Effective help for genocide survivors should both alleviate suffering and encourage resources through tools of recreating a sense of cultural security and pride. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the ecological-transactional model by Bronfenbrenner, this study tested the mediating roles of school, family, and child characteristics between academic achievement and both traumatic war experiences and stressful life events. It further examined which of these characteristics could protect academic achievement from negative trauma impacts. Participants were 303 Palestinian children (51.2% girls; age, M = 10.94 ± 0.50 years) and their parents. Standard tests measured children's language and math achievements. Children reported on motivational beliefs, learning, and coping strategies; teachers' practices and peer relationships; sibling relationships and parents' scholastic involvement; and war trauma and stressful life events. Results showed that parental scholastic involvement and children's motivation and learning strategies mediated between war trauma and academic achievement, whereas teachers' practices, siblingship, and children's motivation and learning strategies mediated the impacts of stressful life events on achievement. Good peer relationships and, marginally, parental scholastic encouragement functioned as protective factors for children's academic achievement in war conditions.

A father's mental health is important for family well-being, but research is scarce on paternal symptoms during the transition to fatherhood. This study identified fathers' latent mental health trajectory classes from the pre- to postnatal period and examined their associations with early fathering experiences. It further analysed, whether a family's infertility history was associated with mental health trajectory classes and moderated their effects on fathering experiences. Finnish fathers (N = 773) reported psychological distress (General Health Questionnaire; GHQ-36) and depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory; BDI-13) in pregnancy (T1), and at 2 months (T2) and 12 months (T3) postpartum. They further reported their fathering experience (Parenting Stress Index; PSI-36) at T2 and T3. Results revealed five paternal mental health trajectory classes, differing in timing and course of symptoms across the pre- and postpartum: stable low (79%) and moderate increasing (9%) levels of symptoms, and prenatal (5%), early fatherhood (3%) and heterogeneous high levels of (4%) problems. The trajectory classes were associated with fathering experiences within parental, interactive and child domains, across the child's first year. The stable low levels of symptoms-class showed the most positive experiences and the heterogeneous high levels of problems-class the most negative ones; mental health problems in the early fatherhood-class reported negative fathering experience, but only when the child was 2 months old. A family's infertility history neither showed any significant association with trajectory classes nor moderated their impact on early fathering, supporting the growing evidence that infertility treatments do not place an additional burden on early fatherhood.

The family environment shapes children's social information processing and emotion regulation. Yet, the long-term effects of early family systems have rarely been studied. This study investigated how family system types predict children's attentional biases toward facial expressions at the age of 10 years. The participants were 79 children from Cohesive, Disengaged, Enmeshed, and Authoritarian family types based on marital and parental relationship trajectories from pregnancy to the age of 12 months. A dot-probe task was used to assess children's emotional attention biases toward threatening (angry) and affiliative (happy) faces at the early (500 ms) and late (1250 ms) stages of processing. Situational priming was applied to activate children's sense of danger or safety. Results showed that children from Cohesive families had an early-stage attentional bias toward threat, whereas children from Enmeshed families had a late-stage bias toward threat. Children from Disengaged families had an early-stage attentional bias toward threat, but showed in addition a late-stage bias away from emotional faces (i.e., both angry and happy). Children from Authoritarian families, in turn, showed a late-stage attentional bias toward emotional faces. Situational priming did not moderate the effects of family system types on children's attentional biases. The findings confirm the influence of early family systems on the attentional biases, suggesting differences in the emotion regulation strategies children have developed to adapt to their family environments.

To better understand the role of neuroendocrinological regulation in adolescent mental health, stress reactivity needs to be analyzed through both the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis. Accordingly, this study examined how adolescents' internalizing and externalizing mental health symptoms are associated with their salivary alpha-amylase and cortisol levels, responses, and coordination (symmetry versus asymmetry). We utilized a developmentally salient stress task of mother–adolescent conflict discussion. Eighty 18–20-year-old late adolescents (55% girls) participated in a home laboratory assessment involving a 10-min conflict discussion with their mothers. Five adolescent saliva samples were collected to measure alpha-amylase and cortisol levels before, immediately after, and in 10-min intervals following the conflict discussion, to indicate stress reactivity. Adolescents had reported their internalizing (depression, anxiety, somatization) and externalizing (inattention, hyperactivity, anger control problems) symptoms 1 year earlier as part of a prospective family study. Internalizing symptoms were associated with adolescents' high baseline cortisol levels, but not with cortisol responses or alpha-amylase levels or responses. In contrast, externalizing symptoms were associated with blunted alpha-amylase responses. Neither internalizing nor externalizing symptoms were associated with asymmetry between alpha-amylase and cortisol reactivity. The mother–adolescent conflict discussion was relevant as a stress stimulus to induce neuroendocrinological stress responses in adolescents. The nature of mental health problems was important for stress reactivity, yet, we found no evidence about mental health problems being related to endocrinological asymmetry in adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To identify within‐family groups according to sleep schedule, problems, and impact, reflecting similarities or differences in adolescents, mothers, and fathers and to examine how mental health and attachments associate with these triadic sleep groups. Background: Family relationships shape sleeping, but within‐family research in adolescence is scarce. Method: Adolescents (17–18 years; 60% girls; n = 438), mothers (n = 448), and fathers (n = 358) filled in the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. The adolescents reported mental health problems by the Behavior Assessment System and the parents by the General Health Questionnaire. All reported attachments by the Experiences in Close Relationships. Results: Cluster analysis identified four triadic sleep groups: "Good family sleep" (47%), "Poor adolescent and maternal sleep" (29%), "Poor paternal sleep" (16%), and "Poor family sleep" (8%). Adolescents in the "Poor family sleep" group had more mental health problems than they did in other groups, and fathers in the "Poor paternal sleep" group showed higher psychiatric symptoms than in the "Good family sleep" or "Poor adolescent and maternal sleep" groups. Adolescents in the "Poor family sleep" group reported higher insecure–anxious attachments than they did in other groups, and fathers reported higher insecure–avoidant and insecure–anxious attachments in the "Poor paternal sleep" than they did in other groups. Conclusion: A family systems approach provides new insight into sleep, mental health, and attachments. Implications: Interventions to improve sleep quality should consider family dynamics that may underlie potential sleep problems, and sleep as a public health issue can benefit from knowledge about family mental health and attachments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]