Recent research published in psychiatry Compared to healthy adolescents without depression, adolescents with depression are more sensitive to parental criticism and more sensitive to parental criticism, as evidenced by measures of increased brain activity and self-report ratings of mood. I discovered that I was insensitive to praise.
Adolescent depression is a serious and common mental health problem that results in a decreased sense of self. Negative interactions between parents and adolescents are thought to be associated with the development of depression. However, little is known about the specific symptoms of depression in adolescents. respond For parental feedback. There, Lizanne van Houtum of Leiden University in the Netherlands, along with her colleagues, investigated how depressed adolescents respond to feedback (both negative and positive) from their parents. We decided to investigate the emotional and brain responses of.
Researchers recruited 20 Dutch youth between the ages of 13.5 and 18 who had been diagnosed with dysthymia (a mild, chronic form of depression) or major depressive disorder (a severe, acute form of depression). . Fifty-nine healthy adolescents aged 12 to 18 years without depression were also recruited. In both groups, parents of adolescents were also invited to participate in the study.
Both adolescents and their parents were initially given “feedback” words that described personality traits in one word. In addition to rating the extent to which these words apply to adolescents, they categorize these words into negative (e.g., “untrustworthy”), neutral (e.g., “chaotic”), and positive (e.g., “kind”) ”) was tasked with evaluating one of the following.
The adolescents were then placed in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner and their brain activity was measured.
Before beginning the task, adolescents were given false information that their mother or father would choose words for both positive and negative feedback that were thought to best describe the adolescent’s personality. I did. Each feedback word was preceded by the words “Your mom/dad thinks you are…”. In reality, participants were actually shown a preprogrammed combination of feedback words, and after seeing each feedback word, the adolescents reported their mood.
Following this task, outside of the MRI scanner, adolescents were asked to freely recall as many feedback words as possible in 2 minutes.
Using mathematical modeling, researchers found that both depressed and healthy adolescents experienced lower mood after criticism and higher mood after praise compared to neutral feedback. I discovered that. However, the level of mood elevation after receiving a compliment is became dull For depressed adolescents compared to healthy adolescents.
Analysis of MRI scans revealed that depressed adolescents had increased brain activity, particularly in the anterior subcingulate cortex (sgACC), in response to criticism compared to healthy adolescents. The sgACC region is hypothesized to be a “gatekeeper” between brain regions that control higher-order cognition and brain regions that control emotion, and is therefore important in mood management. Therefore, van Houtum argues that “increased sgACC activity [indicate] I tried adjusting the [cognitive] and [emotional] circuit [in the brain]”.
MRI scans also show that compared to healthy adolescents, depressed adolescents store social knowledge in addition to brain areas associated with memory for lived events, namely the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus. It was also shown that activity in the temporal pole was increased. These findings are consistent with depressed youth freely remembering more criticism than praise after the MRI scan, indicating that this group paid more attention to negative feedback and This suggests that you tend to remember things more strongly.
As expected, youth with depression exhibited more negative self-views. This is evident in how the words of positive feedback were rated. few Words that applied to themselves and were negative or neutral were rated as follows: more This also applies to myself when compared to healthy adolescents. Furthermore, it was clear that feedback from parents, whether praise or criticism, was uplifting when it was consistent with adolescents’ self-views. Van Houtam is hopeful that parental involvement may help with treatment. “Identifying the personality traits that adolescents value about themselves may be the key to improving their depressed mood…Parents can identify these valued traits in their children. Developing a positive self-view that you can be taught to identify and recognize, and in doing so may receive support. ”
Interestingly, when praise was consistent with adolescents’ self-views, mood improved in both groups, but, interestingly, when criticism was consistent with adolescents’ self-views, small Mood is increased in depressed adolescents compared to healthy adolescents. “Adolescents with depression are particularly sensitive to parental criticism. They already view themselves negatively and are less reliant on their own views in the face of parental criticism,” Van Houtum says. He suggests. In other words, parental criticism appears to overwhelm the reassurance of self-perception confirmation.
Van Houtum said recruitment during the COVID-19 pandemic was difficult, resulting in a small sample size. Some adolescents also had other medical or psychiatric conditions, such as anxiety disorders, which may have influenced their emotional state during the study. Parents who are more strict or neglectful may also be underrepresented in research, even though these parenting styles are strongly associated with adolescent depression. Nevertheless, this study raises important questions about the role of parents in their adolescent children’s mental health.
Research “Sticky Criticism? “Emotional and Neural Responses to Parental Criticism and Praise in Adolescents with Depression” by Lizanne AEM van Houtum, Mirjam CM Wever, Charlotte C. van See, Rose HC Janssen, Wilma GM Written by Wendholt, Marieke S. Trenaar, and Geert-Jan Will. , Barnett M. Elzinga.