Supporting the transition to parenthood: a systematic review of empirical studies on emotional and psychological interventions for first-time parents.

OBJECTIVES: The transition to parenthood can evoke a range of concerns in parents, profoundly impacting their psychological well-being. The literature regarding the transition to parenthood focuses primarily on functional aspects of parenthood, generally overlooking the psychological well-being of parents. METHOD: This comprehensive review synthesized studies describing emotional and psychological interventions during the transition to parenthood among participants between 2013 and 2022. A rigorous screening process, conducted by three of the authors, resulted in 18 studies that met the inclusion criteria. RESULTS: This report provides detailed descriptions of these studies, including their characteristics, demographics, types of interventions, and main outcomes. The majority of interventions focused on mothers and mother-infant dyads, with fewer interventions targeting couples, and none addressing fathers or father-infant dyads. CONCLUSIONS: The interventions examined were found to be effective in reducing symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and stress among mothers and had positive effects on infants' behaviors, mother-infant synchrony, and co-parenting. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: This review stresses the necessity of interventions targeting the transition to parenthood, especially among fathers and marginalized populations, as well as serves to identify barriers faced by vulnerable and minority populations.

Sibling Sexual Abuse: A Review of Empirical Studies in the Field.

Although sibling sexual abuse (SSA) is one of the most common forms of sexual abuse, it has been particularly neglected in previous research. Hence, characteristics of this form of abuse and its longer term implications are not well understood. The aims of the current review were to precisely characterize the phenomenon of SSA and to condense the implications known to date of SSA on survivors. We included 15 studies with a total sample size of 14,680 individuals. Our results indicate that SSA has some unequivocal features such as an early onset, an extended duration and frequency, and a particularly high intensity (i.e., involvement of coercion, force, superiority, and manipulation). Our findings also revealed that SSA is linked to later depression, anxiety, impaired self-esteem, and sexual functioning. The findings of the current review suggest that (1) SSA is common, (2) SSA has various negative effects on survivors' mental health, and that (3) SSA and its implications have been and to date are marginalized in research and practice. Results are discussed with a special focus on clinical implications.

Somatic symptom profiles are associated with pre-treatment depression and anxiety symptom severity but not inpatient therapy outcomes.

OBJECTIVE: Although somatic symptoms are common among mental health patients, their association with symptom severity and inpatient treatment outcomes is not yet well understood. METHODS: Using a pre-post design and latent class analysis (LCA), 641 inpatients (63.4% female) were classified based on their self-reported somatic symptoms. We examined how the resulting somatic symptom classes related to depression and anxiety symptom severity pre-treatment (T1) and to symptom reduction post-treatment (T2). RESULTS: Our results suggest four somatic symptom classes, namely (1) unspecific/low somatic symptom burden, (2) sexual problems, (3) gastrointestinal symptoms with pain syndrome, and (4) cardiopulmonary symptoms. While class 1 indicated the lowest pre-treatment depression and anxiety symptom severity, class 2 reported high depressive symptoms coupled with low anxiety, class 3 reported moderate depressive and anxiety symptom severity, and class 4 reported the highest depressive and anxiety symptom burden. Somatic symptom classes, however, did not predict the degree of reduction in either depression or anxiety symptoms post-treatment. CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrate somatic heterogeneity in mental health patients and reveal the relationship of somatic symptom patterns to affective symptom severity. Clinical implications are discussed.

Childhood Maltreatment and Borderline Personality Disorder: The Mediating Role of Difficulties with Emotion Regulation.

Exposure to childhood maltreatment (CM) increases the risk of developing borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, it remains unclear what mechanisms might mediate this link. One candidate of interest is difficulties with emotion regulation. This study aims to examine the pattern of relations among CM, difficulties with emotion regulation, and the risk of developing BPD. A total of 162 individuals diagnosed with current BPD and 162 matched healthy controls completed self-reported questionnaires assessing CM and difficulties with emotion regulation. The authors found high correlations between CM and BPD diagnosis (r = .73, p < .001). Difficulties with emotion regulation were found to mediate the link between CM and BPD diagnosis (p < .001). Results suggest that CM may play a key role in the etiology of BPD and that difficulties with emotion regulation might be a mediating component between CM and BPD.

Biochemical clusters predict mortality and reported inability to work 10 ​years later.

BACKGROUND: Chronic systemic inflammation has been linked to premature mortality and limited somatic as well as mental health with consequences for capability to work and everyday functioning. We recently identified three biochemical clusters of endocrine and immune parameters (C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin-6 (IL-6), fibrinogen, cortisol and creatinine) in participants, age 35-81 years, of the open access Midlife in the United States Study (MIDUS) dataset. These clusters have been validated in an independent cohort of Japanese mid-life adults. Among these clusters, the one characterized by high inflammation coupled with low cortisol and creatinine concentrations was associated with the highest disease burden, referred to as high-risk cluster in the following. The current study aims to further examine the nature of this cluster and specifically whether it predicts mortality and the reported inability to work the last 30 days 10 years after the biomarker assessment. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Longitudinally assessed health data from N â€‹= â€‹1234 individuals were analyzed in the current study. Logistic regression analyses were performed to predict mortality within one decade after first assessment (T0 â€‹= â€‹first assessment; T1 â€‹= â€‹second assessment). General linear models were used to predict the number of days study participants were unable to work due to health issues in the last 30 days (assessed at T1, analyses restricted to individuals <70 years of age). Biological sex, disease burden, and age at T0 were used as covariates in all analyses. Individuals in the previously identified high-risk cluster had a higher risk for mortality (22% of individuals deceased between T0 and T1 versus 10% respectively 9% in the two other clusters). Logistic regression models predicting mortality resulted in a significant difference between individuals from the high-risk cluster compared to those from an identified reference cluster (indicator method, p â€‹= â€‹.012), independently of age and disease burden. Furthermore, individuals in the high-risk cluster reported a higher number of disability days during the past 30 days (3.4 days in the high-risk cluster versus 1.5 respectively 1.0 days in the reference clusters) assessed at T1. All pairwise comparisons involving the high-risk cluster were significant (all ps â€‹< â€‹.001). CONCLUSIONS: Immune-endocrine profiles are predictive of mortality within the following decade over and above age and disease burden. The findings thus highlight the importance of biomarker-based risk profiling that may provide new targets for interventions in the context of preventive medicine in the transition from health to disease and disease-related mortality.

Childhood Maltreatment and Narcissism: The Mediating Role of Dissociation.

Childhood maltreatment (CM) is thought to be linked to adult narcissistic traits. However, it remains unclear how CM is associated with each type of narcissism, vulnerable and grandiose, and what mechanism mediates these links. One potential candidate is dissociation. This study examines the relations among CM, dissociation, vulnerable narcissism, and grandiose narcissism. A total of 322 women completed self-reported questionnaires assessing CM, dissociation, vulnerable narcissism, and grandiose narcissism. To examine the relations among CM, dissociation, and each type of narcissism, we performed Pearson's correlations and mediation analyses. In secondary analyses, we conducted latent class analyses to classify different types of CM and to assess their relations with the study variables. We found small to moderate correlations between CM and vulnerable narcissism, (r = .35, p < .001) and CM and grandiose narcissism (r = .2, p < .001), with the former association being greater than the latter (z = -3.25, p < .001). Dissociation was found to mediate the link between CM and each type of narcissism (p < .001). Results suggest that CM may play a role in the etiology of vulnerable and grandiose narcissism, and that dissociation links CM to each type of narcissism. Findings highlight that CM may lead to different responses in terms of narcissism-through the same mediation process.

Maternal Inflammation During Pregnancy and Offspring Brain Development: The Role of Mitochondria.

The association between maternal immune activation (MIA) during pregnancy and risk for offspring neuropsychiatric disorders has been increasingly recognized over the past several years. Among the mechanistic pathways that have been described through which maternal inflammation during pregnancy may affect fetal brain development, the role of mitochondria has received little attention. In this review, the role of mitochondria as a potential mediator of the association between MIA during pregnancy and offspring brain development and risk for psychiatric disorders will be proposed. As a basis for this postulation, convergent evidence is presented supporting the obligatory role of mitochondria in brain development, the role of mitochondria as mediators and initiators of inflammatory processes, and evidence of mitochondrial dysfunction in preclinical MIA exposure models and human neurodevelopmental disorders. Elucidating the role of mitochondria as a potential mediator of MIA-induced alterations in brain development and neurodevelopmental disease risk may not only provide new insight into the pathophysiology of mental health disorders that have their origins in exposure to infection/immune activation during pregnancy but also offer new therapeutic targets.

How biomarker patterns can be utilized to identify individuals with a high disease burden: a bioinformatics approach towards predictive, preventive, and personalized (3P) medicine.

Prevalences of non-communicable diseases such as depression and a range of somatic diseases are continuously increasing requiring simple and inexpensive ways to identify high-risk individuals to target with predictive and preventive approaches. Using k-mean cluster analytics, in study 1, we identified biochemical clusters (based on C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, fibrinogen, cortisol, and creatinine) and examined their link to diseases. Analyses were conducted in a US American sample (from the Midlife in the US study, N = 1234) and validated in a Japanese sample (from the Midlife in Japan study, N = 378). In study 2, we investigated the link of the biochemical clusters from study 1 to childhood maltreatment (CM). The three identified biochemical clusters included one cluster (with high inflammatory signaling and low cortisol and creatinine concentrations) indicating the highest disease burden. This high-risk cluster also reported the highest CM exposure. The current study demonstrates how biomarkers can be utilized to identify individuals with a high disease burden and thus, may help to target these high-risk individuals with tailored prevention/intervention, towards personalized medicine. Furthermore, our findings raise the question whether the found biochemical clusters have predictive character, as a tool to identify high-risk individuals enabling targeted prevention. The finding that CM was mostly prevalent in the high-risk cluster provides first hints that the clusters could indeed have predictive character and highlight CM as a central disease susceptibility factor and possibly as a leverage point for disease prevention/intervention. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13167-021-00255-0.