Panic Disorder, Parenting and Infant Neurobiology

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究将在惊恐障碍（PD）父母的孩子的高风险样本中测试有关特定养育行为与父母严重焦虑症状、环境风险和保护因素的影响模型，以检查儿童在生命的头两年的恐惧唤醒。我们将研究来自两个父母诊断组的四个月大的婴儿，以增加患病的可能性：80名母亲患有PD的婴儿和80名母亲没有精神病理的婴儿。在4、14和24个月大时，将评估婴儿对新刺激的恐惧行为和觉醒的神经生物学指标（基线和增强惊吓、唾液皮质醇和睡眠障碍），以及父母的焦虑症状、特定的父母行为、环境风险和保护因素。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This research will test models concerning the impact of specified parenting behaviors in combination with severe symptoms of parental anxiety, environmental risk and protective factors, in a high-risk sample of children of parents with panic disorder (PD), in order to examine child fear arousal across the first two years of life. Four-month infants from two parental diagnostic groups will be studied in order to increment the likelihood of risk: eighty infants with PD mothers and eighty infants of mothers without psychopathology. Infant fearful behaviors in response to novel stimuli and neurobiological indicators of arousal (baseline and potentiated startle, salivary cortisol and sleep disturbances), along with parental anxiety symptoms, specified parenting behaviors, and environmental risk and protective factors, will be assessed at four, fourteen and twenty-four months of age. Caregiver-infant interactions are expected to play an important role in contributing to increasing infant fear-arousal for constitutionally vulnerable infants during this period. This research will provide information concerning which particular factors might contribute to increasing child fear-arousal across the first 2 years of life.