Unraveling the Concept of Childhood Adversity in Psychosis Research: A Systematic Review.

BACKGROUND: During the last decades, an abundance of studies has investigated childhood adversity in relation to psychosis. This systematic review critically examines the methodologies employed to investigate childhood adversity in psychosis over the past decade, including operational definitions, measurement tools and characteristics, and psychometric properties of instruments used in these studies. STUDY DESIGN: This systematic review followed the PRISMA guidelines (registration number CRD42022307096), and the search used the following electronic databases: PsychINFO, SCOPUS, Web of Science, African Index Medicus (AIM), LILACS, CINAHL, EMBASE, and MEDLINE. The search included variations and combinations of the terms targeting childhood adversity and psychosis. STUDY RESULTS: Out of 585 identified studies published between 2010 and 2023, 341 employed a validated instrument to investigate childhood adversity. Our findings show "childhood trauma" being the most frequently examined construct, followed by "child maltreatment" or "child abuse." The short version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire was the dominant instrument. Physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse were most frequently investigated, and indeed the field appears generally to focus on child abuse and neglect over other adversities. Significant psychometric heterogeneity was observed in the selection and summarization of instrument items, with only 59% of studies documenting original psychometric validation and 22% reporting reliability in their datasets. CONCLUSION: This review highlights substantial methodological heterogeneity in the field, pointing out biases in the research on childhood adversity and psychosis. These findings underline the need for standardized definitions and high-quality measurement tools to enhance the validity of future research in this area.

Validation of the short version of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for adolescents in Norway.

BACKGROUND/AIM: The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) is among the most popular and widely used measures of emotion regulation across age groups. This study aimed to validate the CERQ short version (CERQ-short) for use on adolescents in the Norwegian population. METHOD: A sample of 3461 adolescents (47.3% girls) aged 12-16 years was recruited through the UEVO population-based study of child maltreatment in Norway. Factor structure, reliability, measurement invariance and criterion validity were investigated. RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analysis supported the original nine-factor model including 18 items; however, not a two-factor structure nor a higher order two-factor solution. Internal consistency was adequate for all subscales, with alpha levels ranging from .73 to .84 between subscales across genders. Relationships with internalizing problems measured with the 10-item Hopkins Symptom Checklist and health-related quality of life according to KIDSCREEN-10 supported the criterion-related validity of the Norwegian CERQ-short. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that the CERQ-short can be used to measure cognitive emotion regulation strategies in the Norwegian adolescent population. The validation of the CERQ-short in Norway could significantly improve mental health care by facilitating better diagnosis, treatment planning, and evaluation, as well as informing public health policy and cross-cultural research.

Affective inhibitory control and risk for internalizing problems in adolescents exposed to child maltreatment: A population-based study.

Adolescents' emotion regulatory capacities modulate the relationship between child maltreatment experiences and psychopathology. Affective inhibitory control constitutes an important part of emotion regulation and involves the ability to regulate automatic or prepotent responses to irrelevant and potentially distracting emotional information. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of affective inhibitory control in the relationship between exposure to child maltreatment and internalizing problems in adolescence. A nationally representative sample of adolescents (n = 9,240; 49% girls; Mage = 14 years; SD = 0.9), of which n = 4,261 (55% girls; Mage = 14 years; SD = 0.9) were exposed to child maltreatment, conducted an emotional go/no-go task. Participants were presented with angry facial expressions as emotional no-go stimuli in order to examine their ability to inhibit behavioral responses to threatening task-irrelevant stimuli. Affective inhibitory control problems were uniquely related to internalizing problems in maltreated adolescents. Gender effects were observed; the relationship was significant in girls but not in boys. Moreover, affective inhibitory control moderated the relationship between exposure to psychological abuse and internalizing problems in girls. We did not observe any relationship between inhibitory control and internalizing problems when neutral faces were presented as task-irrelevant information. Findings suggest that a reduced ability to inhibit threatening, but task-irrelevant, information is related to internalizing problems in maltreated adolescent girls. Results highlight the importance of affective inhibitory control as a potential moderating mechanism in individual risk for experiencing internalizing problems in abused adolescents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

A Multilevel Investigation of Resiliency Scales for Children and Adolescents: The Relationships Between Self-Perceived Emotion Regulation, Vagally Mediated Heart Rate Variability, and Personal Factors Associated With Resilience.

Personal resiliency refers to individual attributes that are related to the process of successfully adapting to the environment in the face of adverse conditions, also known as resilience. Emotion regulation is increasingly found as a core component in mental health and found to modulate individual differences in the management of emotional responses. The Resiliency Scales for Children and Adolescents (RSCA; Prince-Embury, 2006, 2007) were designed to systematically identify and quantify core personal qualities of resiliency in youth, and includes Sense of Mastery scale (MAS), Sense of Relatedness scale (REL), and Emotional Reactivity (REA) scale. The following study was first conducted to confirm the Three-Factor model of Personal Resiliency in a Norwegian student sample using factor analytic procedures. Secondly and the main purpose of the study, was to investigate if personal resiliency is associated with self-reported measures related to emotion regulation, and with resting vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) as a psychophysiological index of emotion regulation capacity. A revised scale adapted to the Norwegian sample was developed. Results indicate that protective indices related to personal resiliency are associated with both self-reported adaptive emotion regulation and outcome, and partly related to high capacity for emotion regulation indicated by vmHRV. Risk related to personal vulnerability was associated with maladaptive emotion regulation and outcome, but was not associated with emotion regulation capacity. Together the findings provide supporting evidence of both self-reported and psychophysiological correlates between emotion regulatory processes and personal resiliency indicated by RSCA.