mental health dev psych

ATYPICAL DEVELOPMENT

Different trajectory of meeting milestones compared to the norm

➤ This is only a problem when it is associated with impairment

➤ Age 1-3: Developmental Delays, Autism Spectrum Disorder

➤ Age 3-5: Emergence of fears, some separation anxiety and phobias

➤ Age 5-10: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

➤ Adolescence: Increases in anxiety and depression, common onset of psychosis/schizophrenia

mental health

• Children’s sense of wellbeing

  • Internally - emotions and stress levels

  • Externally - relationships with family members and peers, school performance, other activities

• Exists on a continuum

• Varies both between and within individuals

stress

• Stress - A physiological reaction to some change/threat in the environment (can lead to fight/flight).

  • In itself is not a bad thing. Prepares the body for an adaptive reaction (e.g., moving quickly, focused attention, more energy)

  • Inability to manage or regulate stress can lead to psychological disorders such as anxiety and depression

• Toxic Stress - the idea that you can experience overwhelming levels of stress without support from adults to hep mitigate the effects of that stress

• Chronic and/or overwhelming

• Lack of support

• Beyond the person’s ability to cope/adapt

ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES

• Adverse childhood experiences such as abuse, neglect, violence exposure, or death of a parent

• Single biggest preventable cause of mental health difficulties across the lifespan

INTERNALIZING DISORDERS

Depression: A mental disorder that involves sad or irritable mood along with physical and cognitive changes that affect the individual’s ability to function

– Both gender and developmental effects

– Heritability around ~40%, ACEs and stress contribute as well

– Cognitive component → CBT can help but only 39% of teens get help

Anxiety: Inability to regulate fear and worry

– Separation anxiety is normative, unless it is not

– Anxiety tends to emerge earlier than depression

– Clear contributions of genetics and environment; inhibited temperament

MENTAL DISORDERS

CONNECTION TO DEVELOPMENT

➤ Children learn models of body (interoception) and emotion understanding throughout development through interactions with caregivers

➤ Predictable early environments (including caregiver interactions) allow individuals to regulate themselves over time

➤ Unpredictable environments make it harder to make accurate models, lots of prediction error, energy inefficiencies, etc.

➤ Some behaviors can be appropriate for an unpredictable environment – e.g., hypervigilance helps you ready yourself for the unexpected

➤ Parents co-regulation along with exposure to small, supported, developmentally-appropriate “stress” predicts better mental health outcomes

WHAT DO WE LEARN FROM ATYPICAL DEVELOPMENT?

➤ Early caregiving adversity/Romanian orphanage example: the importance of early attachment relationships

➤ Autism Spectrum Disorder: typical intrinsic understanding of communication and social cues. Building blocks of language and social skills.

➤ Anxiety and depression: the importance of differentiating toxic from normal stress

➤ Nature vs. nurture in typical development

➤ Parenting contributions to development

NATURE AND NURTURE

• Nature and nurture start interacting before birth

  • Ex: The effect of teratogens may depend in part on mother and child’s genetics

• Children and their environments are bi-directional

  • Ex. Smiley babies elicit warm caregiving, warm caregiving makes for smiley babies

• Timing of experiences matters

  • Ex. Timing of teratogen exposure, language

• Nature/genetics unfold over time

  • Ex. Depression in adolescence

• In sum, everything influences everything

THE ACTIVE CHILD – OR HOW CHILDREN SHAPE THEIR OWN DEVELOPMENT

• A central tenet of many theories

  • Key example: Piaget!

• Self-initiated activity

  • Begins in utero (tasting amniotic fluid, kicking), extends to infants’ eye movements and crawling, continues to complex behaviors in childhood and even self-socialization and gender segregation at later ages

• Active interpretation of experience

  • Asking why in childhood; individual differences like hostile attribution bias

• Self-regulation

  • Children change dramatically in their ability to control behaviors and emotions; individual differences in self-regulation predict key outcomes

• Eliciting reactions from other people

  • Ex. Babies with an easy temperament will evoke different responses than babies with difficult temperament; effects can snowball over time

CONTINUITY VS. DISCONTINUITY

• Development is both continuous and discontinuous

  • Example: Change in height, shows gradual change with spike at puberty

• Continuity/discontinuity of individual differences

  • Many individual differences are stable but not 100% so, stability depends in part on whether environment remains stable

  • Example traits: IQ, temperament, academic achievement

• Continuity/discontinuity of overall development

  • Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, Freud’s theory of psychosocial development, Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development and Kohlberg’s theory of moral development revolve around notion of “stages”

  • Helpful for explaining development and it’s true that jumps can occur BUT in general, development is much messier and more continuous

MECHANISMS OF CHANGE - HOW DOES CHANGE OCCUR?

• Biological mechanisms

  • Begin at the level of conception and cell division, through neurogenesis and synaptogenesis to higher order brain specialization

• Behavior change mechanisms

  • Key learning tools: Habituation, operant and Pavlovian conditioning

• Social learning

  • Example: Social referencing, imitation, modeling

• Information processing mechanisms

  • Examples: Changes in strategy use, metacognition

• Domain-specific learning mechanisms

  • Infants rapidly learn about domains relevant for survival (e.g., physics)

• Change mechanisms work together

SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXT

• When and where children grow up has a tremendous impact on nearly all aspects of their development

  • Examples: Parent discipline practices, language, emotional expressiveness, language…Sesame Street

• Many historical and contextual factors have pluses and minuses

  • Example: Internet, social media, war, AI

• Variability within a society

  • Economic factors weigh heavily on development, especially in societies with large disparities

  • Family and peer influences (which may be consistent or inconsistent with broader culture)

• Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Model

  • Children are influenced by the spheres within which they live their lives

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

• What constitutes an important individual difference?

  • Breadth of related characteristics (e.g., reach of IQ at Time 1), stability over time, predictive of imp. future outcomes

• Trickiness: I.D.’s are not randomly distributed

  • Ex: Attachment and self-esteem

• Stability is maintained by both genes and environment

• Heterotypic continuity: I.D.’s remain constant, despite different expression

• Causes of individual differences: Genes and experiences

HOW DOES RESEARCH INFORM CHILDREN’S WELLBEING

• Parenting

  • Pick a good partner, healthy pregnancy, reduce major health risks (vaccinate!), form a secure attachment, provide stimulation

• Education

  • Piaget: Active learner; Vygotsky: Social scaffolding

• Helping children at risk

  • Importance of timing (early intervention)

  • Disrupting maltreatment early (dose response) and preventing conditions that put parents at risk

• Biology and environment work together

  • Informs detection and treatment

• Every problem has multiple causes

  • Consider multiple risks

• Improving social policy

  • Parental leave, good quality childcare

  • Legal: Eyewitness testimony, juvenile justice