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Sensitive and responsive caregiving is a critical protective factor for children in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) during their first 1000 days of life. Health initiatives may benefit from evaluating the experience of caregivers in SSA to understand their parenting experiences. This study utilized linguistic analysis to gain insight into the lived experience of 19 Sesotho-speaking mothers of infants aged 18–30 months in low-income areas of Mangaung, Free State, South Africa. Women were asked the same set of questions about their child's first 1000 days of life, and we used LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) LIWC to evaluate the perspectives of mothers in SA compared to published LIWC norms. Analyses revealed word use patterns associated with psychological processes such as negative affect, social processes, anger and anxiety. Findings are discussed within the context of Sesotho culture to aid in the future intervention development for this vulnerable population. This study is important because it yields important information about the subjective experience of an understudied critical population of mothers in SSA. Further, this study points to future directions for the field of understanding the impact of motherhood on women in low resource settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of unaccompanied immigrant minors (UIMs) and families from Central America seeking asylum in the U.S. continues to rise. This growth, combined with restrictive government policies, led to crowded and suboptimal conditions in Customs and Border Patrol and non-governmental organization facilities. COVID-19 further taxed facilities and exacerbated uncertainty surrounding length of detention, basic human rights, and family reunification. The current project features testimonies from the authors who work as clinical experts and providers in Texas – a top destination for Central American immigrants. In collaboration with a deputy director of a not-for-profit human rights organization, volunteer psychologists, and the director of a humanitarian respite center, we describe challenges faced by administrators and clinical staff in addressing the mental health needs of immigrant children and families during the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary themes identified were anti-immigrant policies that occurred concurrently with COVID-19; difficulty implementing COVID-19 protocols alongside scarcity of supplies and volunteers; increased mental health needs among UIMs and immigrant families; and challenges in UIM placement upon release from custody. Strategies for addressing clinical challenges in the near- and long-term and opportunities for improvement in care systems to immigrant youth, including correcting anti-immigrant policies, addressing ongoing COVID-19 protocols and challenges, meeting mental and physical health needs, facilitating release and reunification for unaccompanied immigrant minors, and maximizing youth resilience through trauma-informed interventions, are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms among firefighters are prevalent and well-documented. Insecure adult attachment style (AAS) and distress tolerance (DT) present two factors with demonstrated relevance to the etiology and maintenance of PTSD. Few studies have examined these constructs in relation to PTSD symptomatology among firefighter populations. The present investigation examined the indirect effect of insecure romantic AAS (i.e., anxious AAS, avoidant AAS) on PTSD symptom severity through DT among firefighters. Exploratory analyses examined this model with each of the PTSD symptom clusters as outcomes. The sample was comprised of 105 firefighters (Mage = 40.43, SD = 9.15, 95.2% male) recruited from various departments in the southern U.S. An indirect effect was calculated using 10,000 bootstrapped samples. Indirect effects models in the primary analyses were significant when both anxious AAS (β =.20, SE =.10, CI =.06-.43) and avoidant AAS (β =.28, SE =.12, CI =.08-.54) were evaluated as predictors. Effects were evident after accounting for gender, relationship status, years of fire service, and trauma load (i.e., number of potentially traumatic event types experienced). Exploratory analyses revealed that anxious and avoidant AAS are both indirectly related to the PTSD intrusion, negative alterations in cognitions and mood, and alterations in arousal and reactivity symptom clusters through DT. Anxious AAS also demonstrated an indirect association with PTSD avoidance symptoms through DT. Attachment styles may influence PTSD symptoms among firefighters through a firefighter's perceived ability to withstand emotional distress. This line of inquiry has potential to inform specialized intervention programs for firefighters. Clinical and empirical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It appears that social information processing is negatively affected by inflammation, but extant research is primarily experimental and comes from laboratory-based manipulations of inflammatory states. We aimed to examine interactions between inflammation, stressful life events, and positive memories of childhood relations with parents in relation to social information processing in 201 adults. We hypothesized that increased inflammation and stressful life events would be associated with greater hostile social information processing, but that positive memories of childhood relations with parents would moderate both relations. Results indicated that high IL-6 levels and stressful life events were significantly associated with direct and hostile social information processing. Positive memories of childhood relations with parents attenuated the link between stressful life events and social information processing. Findings suggest that both immune function and environmental stressors are related to social information processing and that positive memories of childhood relations exert some buffering effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attachment affects a child's well-being across their lifespan. This study aimed to describe internal working models of attachment in immigrant adolescents – an often overlooked population that frequently experiences caregiver separation. Data were collected from a high school for recently immigrated youth. Attachment was assessed using the Child Attachment Interview (CAI; n = 35) and personal experiences of separation from caregivers were assessed using a semi-structured interview (n = 31). Findings indicated 62.1% of respondents experienced the migration of one of their caregivers. Separation from mothers was linked to lower maternal attachment security. Descriptive data supported this result. Despite a small sample size, the current study utilized interview-based methods to provide in-depth characterizations of parental separation and adolescent attachment in an understudied population. Finally, the current study has implications for public policy debates regarding immigrant families, which have recently surged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research suggests that oxytocin, a neuropeptide implicated in attachment, is a promising clinical tool because it increases affiliation and attachment behaviors, which are reduced in a range of psychiatric disorders. Oxytocin has been recommended as a psychiatric treatment for adolescents, but this remains largely unstudied. Skepticism is warranted, based on mixed findings in adults and absence of data across development. The objective of this study was to examine the effect of intranasal oxytocin on attachment-related and non-attachment-related trust in an interactive game, determining how this effect differs among inpatient adolescents and healthy controls and whether this effect is moderated by attachment security. There were 122 adolescents (ages 12–17; n = 75 inpatient, 70% female, 37% Black, 24% Hispanic, 20% White, and 20% multiracial; n = 46 control, 55% female, 75% Caucasian) randomized to receive self-administered intranasal oxytocin or a placebo and play a trust game with their mother and a stranger over the Internet. Oxytocin only affected the trust game behavior of adolescents when attachment security was moderate or low. At these levels, oxytocin increased the trust of patients, such that their behavior was equivalent to that of healthy controls. Paradoxically, oxytocin reduced the investments of healthy control subjects. This study takes a first step toward determining whether, and for whom, oxytocin may have a trust-enhancing effect and challenges simplistic notions of oxytocin as the attachment-chemical of the brain—pointing instead to differential oxytocin effects based upon clinical status (patient vs. control) and attachment security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the greatest dilemmas facing clinicians who provide psychological services to recently immigrated, unaccompanied minors is when to refer children out of the immigration shelter-based treatment to which they have begun adjusting and into a new, more structured environment in which they would face yet another transition and period of adjustment. When is it worth the disruption to adaptation and shelter integration? The current paper represents the experience of two clinicians who provide psychological assessment services to recently immigrated, unaccompanied minors from Central America in the United States and examines practical problems and empirical findings related to this decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to examine the implementation of eating disorder education and prevention programs in high schools retrospectively, as reported by incoming college freshmen, exploring whether characteristics of the school influenced implementation. The sample, 169 first-year students from a public university, participated in an online survey inquiring about exposure to programs and high school characteristics. Results demonstrated few students exposed to any eating disorder programming (29.0%), with no students reporting exposure to prevention programming. Furthermore, there were no significant differences in the implementation based on school characteristics, suggesting that this is a universal issue across high schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing attachment in adolescents is important due to relations between insecurity and psychopathology. The child attachment interview (CAI) holds promise in this regard, but is time-consuming to code, which may render it inaccessible. The aim of this study was to develop computerized neural network models to predict attachment classifications on the CAI and to determine whether the models could achieve the CAI’s benchmark qualification of 80% on reliability training cases. Four hundred and ninety interviews from inpatient adolescents served as model training and testing samples. The CAI’s 30 standard reliability cases were treated as the independent holdout sample, in which the performance of the final models was evaluated against the 80% benchmark. Models demonstrated moderate accuracy and high correct classification rates, as compared to human coders. Performance was poorer when models were applied to the reliability training cases, but automated coding of the CAI holds promise for future development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using a sample of female psychiatric inpatient adolescents, the current study aimed to extend this literature to an adolescent sample for the first time by examining if linguistic markers and their subcategories (cognitive process words, pronoun use, and somatosensory detail) in a trauma account are related to trauma symptomology and recovery during inpatient care. Results indicated that greater use of body words and fewer insight words were related to increased trauma symptoms at admission. In addition, use of fewer cognitive process words at admission predicted greater symptom change at discharge, extending previous research findings to an adolescent sample. Findings suggest that linguistic analysis may be an important component of adolescent trauma symptom assessment and treatment monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Evidence suggests that insecure attachment operates on daily life through anomalies in social cognitive processing. This study sought to evaluate the relation between one type of social-cognitive processing, mentalizing, and attachment insecurity in inpatient adolescents, examining how both relate to peer problems. The aims were to examine (1) attachment-based differences in mentalizing, (2) attachment-based differences in peer functioning, and (3) whether attachment-based differences in peer functioning are explained by differences in mentalizing. Two-hundred and seventy-one adolescents (Mage= 15.95 years,SD= 1.43, 62.0% female) were recruited from an inpatient psychiatric hospital. Attachment was evaluated using an interview-based measure, mentalizing was assessed with an experimental task, and peer problems were assessed using two measures. Findings revealed attachment-related group differences in mentalizing and peer problems. Mentalizing mediated the relation between disorganized attachment and peer problems. This study contributes to knowledge of how attachment relates to mentalizing and interpersonal functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]