Perceived Neighborhood Safety and Depressive Symptoms: The Role of Perceived Neighborhood Cohesion and Perceived Control.

Few have examined mechanisms explaining the link between perceived neighborhood unsafety, neighborhood social processes, and depressive symptoms for Black adolescents. The goal of this study was to examine the role of perceived control as a mechanism linking perceptions of neighborhood unsafety and depressive symptoms, and neighborhood cohesion as a protective factor. Participants were 412 Black adolescents living in a major Mid-Atlantic urban center in the United States (49% female, Mage = 15.80, SD = 0.36). Participants reported perceptions of neighborhood unsafety at grade 10, neighborhood cohesion at grade 10, perceived control at grades 10 and 11 and depressive symptoms in grades 10 and 12. High neighborhood unsafety was associated with low perceived control and in turn high depressive symptoms only when neighborhood cohesion was high. The results highlight the role of neighborhood unsafety and perceived control in the development of depressive symptom and the possible downsides of neighborhood social factors.

Residence in High-Crime Neighborhoods Moderates the Association Between Interleukin 6 and Social and Nonsocial Reward Brain Responses.

BACKGROUND: Residence in high-crime neighborhoods, especially in childhood, is linked to mental health issues later. Detecting distinct neurobiological processes underlying the effects of this environmental stressor may be critical to identifying prevention and intervention targets. This study examined the relationships of levels of a circulating inflammatory protein with social and monetary reward-related brain function among adolescents who lived in high- versus low-crime neighborhoods during childhood. METHODS: A total of 70 participants (mean age = 16.3 years; 57% female) completed measures of inflammatory markers, depression history, and health and 2 functional magnetic resonance imaging tasks assessing responsivity to monetary and social rewards. Multivariate linear regression tested whether individuals with higher interleukin 6, an inflammatory cytokine, who also lived in neighborhoods with higher crime had distinct orbitofrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens activation to monetary reward and social acceptance. RESULTS: For adolescents who lived in neighborhoods with more crime, higher interleukin 6 was associated with higher nucleus accumbens responses to social acceptance. We did not detect significant moderating effects of neighborhood crime rates on the associations of interleukin 6 with orbitofrontal cortex responses to social acceptance or orbitofrontal cortex/nucleus accumbens activation during monetary reward anticipation or outcome. These results were obtained before and after adjusting for neighborhood income and other covariates. We did not detect significant moderating effects of neighborhood income. CONCLUSIONS: High-threat residence environment and specific demands of the social context in childhood may have shaped the effect of peripheral immune activation on reward-related neural function in adolescence. The prevailing view that inflammation-associated behaviors are characterized by blunted responsiveness to reward may be oversimplistic.

Residential mobility, neighborhood cohesion, and depressive symptoms among urban-dwelling African American adolescents.

Mechanisms linking residential mobility and depressive symptoms among urban-dwelling African American adolescents have received little attention. This study examined neighborhood cohesion as a possible mechanism. Participants were 358 urban-dwelling African American adolescents (Mage = 14.78; SD = 0.34) who reported their neighborhood cohesion in Grade 10 and depressive symptoms in Grades 9 and 11, and for whom residential address information was available. There was a significant indirect effect of past moves in middle school on depressive symptoms 1 year later through reduced neighborhood cohesion. However, the indirect effect was not significant in a propensity score-matched sample. Results from the full sample of adolescents suggest that neighborhood cohesion may play a role in the experience of depressive symptoms following past moves in middle school. Different findings for the propensity score-matched sample highlight the need for future studies of residential mobility to employ strategies to correct for possible selection bias.

The role of negative emotional reactivity and neighborhood factors in predicting marijuana use during early adolescence.

INTRODUCTION: Negative emotional reactivity and the neighborhood environment have been individually associated with marijuana use outcomes; however, less is known about whether neighborhood factors differentiate the association between negative emotional reactivity and marijuana use. The present study examined whether neighborhood risk (i.e., neighborhood problems) and protective factors (i.e., neighborhood social cohesion) moderated the relation between negative emotional reactivity and marijuana use during early adolescence. METHODS: Participants were 775 adolescents (M = 10.95 ± 0.88 years; 69% male; 76% Caucasian), who reported on their past month frequency of marijuana use at Time 1 (when adolescents were 10-12 years old) and Time 2 (when adolescents were 12-14 years old). Mothers reported on neighborhood problems and neighborhood social cohesion at Time 1. Youth reported on their negative emotional reactivity at Time 2. RESULTS: Negative binomial regression analyses indicated that neighborhood problems moderated the relationship between negative emotional reactivity and marijuana use. In particular, in the context of low neighborhood problems, individuals with lower negative emotional reactivity were at attenuated risk for marijuana use compared to individuals higher in negative emotional reactivity. In the context of high neighborhood problems, individuals were at heightened risk for marijuana consumption regardless of their negative emotional reactivity levels. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that individual-level factors alone do not sufficiently account for early marijuana use and that neighborhood problems play a role in risk for or abstention from using marijuana during early adolescence. Implications for prevention and intervention for marijuana use during adolescence are discussed.

The Combination of Living in High Crime Neighborhoods and High Rumination Predicts Depressive Symptoms among Adolescents.

Living in high crime areas and rumination each have been identified as risk factors for depression among youth, yet it is unclear how crime and rumination may synergistically increase the risk of adolescent depression. Adolescents (N = 309; 51% female, Mage= 12.9, SD = 0.61) completed self-report measures of rumination, depressive symptoms, and provided local addresses, which were used to match police district crime statistics. Approximately one year later, participants again reported depressive symptoms. Moderation analyses indicated that the tendency to ruminate exacerbated the relationship between violent crime rates, but not non-violent crime, and higher prospective levels of depressive symptoms among adolescents. These findings suggest that individual-level interventions that promote more adaptive emotion response styles may lower the risk of depression among adolescents residing in high crime areas.

The role of lifetime anxiety history in the course of bipolar spectrum disorders.

Individuals with bipolar spectrum disorder (BSD) frequently meet criteria for comorbid anxiety disorders, and anxiety may be an important factor in the etiology and course of BSDs. The current study examined the association of lifetime anxiety disorders with prospective manic/hypomanic versus major depressive episodes. Participants were 244 young adults (aged 17-26) with milder forms of BSDs (i.e., bipolar-II, cyclothymia, BD-NOS). First, bivariate analyses assessed differences in baseline clinical characteristics between participants with and without DSM-IV anxiety diagnoses. Second, negative binomial regression analyses tested whether lifetime anxiety predicted number of manic/hypomanic or major depressive episodes developed during the study. Third, survival analyses evaluated whether lifetime anxiety predicted time to onset of manic/hypomanic and major depressive episodes. Results indicated that anxiety history was associated with greater illness severity at baseline. Over follow-up, anxiety history predicted fewer manic/hypomanic episodes, but did not predict number of major depressive episodes. Anxiety history also was associated with longer time to onset of manic/hypomanic episodes, but shorter time to onset of depressive episodes. Findings corroborate past studies implicating anxiety disorders as salient influences on the course of BSDs. Moreover, results extend prior research by indicating that anxiety disorders may be linked with reduced manic/hypomanic phases of illness.

CAD or MAD? Anger (not disgust) as the predominant response to pathogen-free violations of the divinity code.

The CAD triad hypothesis (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999) stipulates that, cross-culturally, people feel anger for violations of autonomy, contempt for violations of community, and disgust for violations of divinity. Although the disgust-divinity link has received some measure of empirical support, the results have been difficult to interpret in light of several conceptual and design flaws. Taking a revised methodological approach, including use of newly validated (Study 1), pathogen-free violations of the divinity code, we found (Study 2) little evidence of disgust-related phenomenology (nausea, gagging, loss of appetite) or action tendency (desire to move away), but much evidence of anger-linked desire to retaliate, as a major component of individuals' projected response to "pure" (pathogen-free) violations of the divinity code. Study 3 replicated these results using faces in lieu of words as a dependent measure. Concordant findings emerged from an archival study (Study 4) examining the aftermath of a real-life sacred violation-the burning of Korans by U.S. military personnel. Study 5 further corroborated these results using continuous measures based on everyday emotion terms and new variants of the divinity-pure scenarios featuring sacrilegious acts committed by a theologically irreverent member of one's own group rather than an ideologically opposed member of another group. Finally, a supplemental study found the anger-dominant attribution pattern to remain intact when the impious act being judged was the judge's own. Based on these and related results, we posit anger to be the principal emotional response to moral transgressions irrespective of the normative content involved.

Clinical comparison of 99mTc exametazime and 123I Ioflupane SPECT in patients with chronic mild traumatic brain injury.

BACKGROUND: This study evaluated the clinical interpretations of single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) using a cerebral blood flow and a dopamine transporter tracer in patients with chronic mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). The goal was to determine how these two different scan might be used and compared to each other in this patient population. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Twenty-five patients with persistent symptoms after a mild TBI underwent SPECT with both (99m)Tc exametazime to measure cerebral blood flow (CBF) and (123)I ioflupane to measure dopamine transporter (DAT) binding. The scans were interpreted by two expert readers blinded to any case information and were assessed for abnormal findings in comparison to 10 controls for each type of scan. Qualitative CBF scores for each cortical and subcortical region along with DAT binding scores for the striatum were compared to each other across subjects and to controls. In addition, symptoms were compared to brain scan findings. TBI patients had an average of 6 brain regions with abnormal perfusion compared to controls who had an average of 2 abnormal regions (p<0.001). Patient with headaches had lower CBF in the right frontal lobe, and higher CBF in the left parietal lobe compared to patients without headaches. Lower CBF in the right temporal lobe correlated with poorer reported physical health. Higher DAT binding was associated with more depressive symptoms and overall poorer reported mental health. There was no clear association between CBF and DAT binding in these patients. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, both scans detected abnormalities in brain function, but appear to reflect different types of physiological processes associated with chronic mild TBI symptoms. Both types of scans might have distinct uses in the evaluation of chronic TBI patients depending on the clinical scenario.