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Intergenerational transmission of emotion dysregulation: Part I. Psychopathology, self-injury, and parasympathetic responsivity among pregnant women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2019

Betty Lin ,
Parisa R. Kaliush ,
Elisabeth Conradt ,
Sarah Terrell ,
Dylan Neff ,
Ashley K. Allen ,
Marcela C. Smid ,
Catherine Monk  and
Sheila E. Crowell
Betty Lin
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA
Parisa R. Kaliush
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Elisabeth Conradt
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA Department of Pediatrics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Sarah Terrell
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Dylan Neff
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Ashley K. Allen
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Marcela C. Smid
Affiliation:
Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA Program for Addiction Research, Clinical Care, Knowledge and Advocacy (PARCKA), Division of Epidemiology, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Catherine Monk
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA
Sheila E. Crowell*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA Department of Psychiatry, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
*
Author for Correspondence: Sheila E. Crowell, Department of Psychology, University of Utah, 380 South 1530 East, Behavioral Sciences 502, Salt Lake City, UT 84112; E-mail: sheila.crowell@psych.utah.edu.
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Abstract

The World Health Organization recently reported that maternal mental health is a major public health concern. As many as one in four women suffer from psychiatric disorders at some point during pregnancy or the first postpartum year. Furthermore, self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs) represent one of the leading causes of death among women during this time. Thus, efforts to identify women at risk for serious forms of psychopathology and especially for SITBs are of utmost importance. Despite this urgency, current single-diagnostic approaches fail to recognize a significant subset of women who are vulnerable to perinatal stress and distress. The current study was among the first to investigate emotion dysregulation—a multilevel, transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology—and its associations with stress, distress, and SITBs in a sample of pregnant women (26–40 weeks gestation) recruited to reflect a range of emotion dysregulation. Both self-reported emotion dysregulation and respiratory sinus arrhythmia, a biomarker of emotion dysregulation, demonstrated expected associations with measures of mental health, including depression, anxiety, borderline personality pathology, and SITBs. In addition, self-reported emotion dysregulation was associated with blunted respiratory sinus arrhythmia responsivity to an ecologically valid infant cry task. Findings add to the literature considering transdiagnostic risk during pregnancy using a multiple-levels-of-analysis approach.

Keywords

emotion dysregulationpregnancypsychophysiologyself-injurious thoughts and behaviorswomen's mental health
Type
Special Issue Articles
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 31 , Special Issue 3: Emotion Dysregulation and Emerging Psychopathology , August 2019 , pp. 817 - 831
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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