Familial contexts of mental impairment in schoolchildren and emotion reactivity in adolescents with conduct disorder

The emotional climate between mothers and their children and other environmental factors are known to be significant indicators for the development of childhood psychopathology. However, the parent–child relationship can be affected by several psychosocial risk factors, especially maternal mental health. Moreover, there is significant evidence suggesting that most psychopathology in children and adolescents rests upon deficits in their emotion processing. In our study, we accounted for conduct disorder (Beauchaine et al.) as one correlate of deficient emotion processing in adolescent girls and boys.
The participants in our first study were 49 children aged 5-7 and their mothers. The Five-Minute Speech Sample (FMSS) was used to evaluate maternal expressed emotion (EE). Behavioral disorders were assessed with the German version of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL 14-18). Psychopathology in mothers was assessed using the German version of the Brief Symptoms Inventory (BSI). The quality of the mother–child interaction was observed during a standardized problem-solving task. In our second study, 927 girls (427 CD, 500 controls) and 519 boys (266 CD, 253 controls) aged 9-18 years participated. Two sad film clips were shown to induce an emotional response. Heart Rate (HR), Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA; parasympathetic activity), and Pre-Ejection Period (PEP; sympathetic activity) measured ANS activity. Sex differences were investigated as well as differences in CD subgroups using comorbid internalizing disorders (INT) and the low prosocial emotion specifier (LPE) as grouping variables.
Our first study could add new insights into, and understanding of, the behavioral problems of children. Our results could highlight noteworthy links between a mother’s criticism, child psychopathology and mother-child interactional patterns. In the light of our results and in order to improve the treatment of preschool children with mental health problems, it seems to be vital to reduce maternal psychological strain and to improve the quality of mother-child-interactions. The results of our second study showed that CD is characterized by an increased autonomic emotional response, which is most pronounced in CD subjects without LPE. Moreover, results suggested emotion regulation problems in both CD boys and CD girls. However, smoking may be a confounding factor in relation to this association and, thus, requires further investigation.